The shaken residents of Eretz Yisroel tried to continue with
their regular affairs, shaken by the rising violence and
cruelty of the Palestinian attacks on innocent children,
women and peaceful citizens.
Five Israelis were killed on Tuesday morning in terror
attacks.
The first attack happened in Tel Aviv around 2.15 A.M. when a
Palestinian gunman opened fire on two restaurants. The
trademark of one of them, Sea Food Market, is a large orange
shrimp. The Palestinian murdered three before he was killed.
Fourteen were injured.
Devora Friedman Hy"d, 46, of Efrat was killed and her
husband was lightly injured when gunmen opened fire on their
car Tuesday morning on the Tunnel Road connecting the Gush
Etzion block of settlements in the West Bank to Jerusalem.
Around 8.30 A.M. Tuesday morning, a suicide bomber blew
himself up on an almost empty bus in Afula, killing one.
Eighteen people were taken to the Haemek hospital in the
northern town.
Also on Tuesday morning, a bomb exploded in the yard of a
Palestinian school in Zur Bachar, a village on the eastern
edge of Jerusalem. Eight people were injured in the attack; a
teacher was moderately hurt and seven children lightly
injured.
Some accused Jewish vigilantes of the attack, but there is no
evidence of this. Police said that it may have been a bomb
being prepared for an attack that went off prematurely.
Twenty-two people were killed in four terrorist attacks in
less than 24 hours from almost right after Shabbos: in
Jerusalem, the Judean Desert, near Ofra in Samaria, and at
the Kissufim crossing in the Gaza Strip.
At 7:13 p.m. on motzei shabbos, a suicide bomber
detonated his explosives, packed with shrapnel designed to
maim if not kill, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit
Yisroel, killing ten people -- including a seven month old
infant and her mother, an eighteen month old infant, girls
aged 7 and 3, a 12-year-old boy, a 15-year-old boy,
Hy"d -- and wounding at least 57. Seven of those
murdered were from a single family from Rishon Letzion.
Close to 8 p.m. the body of Jerusalem police detective Moshe
Dayan Hy"d from Ma'aleh Adumim was discovered near the
Mar Saba Monastery in the Judean Desert. He was shot a number
of times as he rode his motorcycle in the desert.
The next morning at 6:30 a.m., a Palestinian sniper perched
on a hilltop overlooking an army roadblock in the Halamiya
Valley north of Ofra, shot and killed seven soldiers and
three civilians, Hy"d, and wounded four others. The
sniper then escaped, leaving his carbine rifle behind.
An hour later, a Palestinian gunman set up an ambush near a
guard post south of the Kissufim crossing in the Gaza Strip.
The gunman opened fire, killing one Hy"d and wounding
four others, one moderately.
The next day, seven members of the same family killed in the
suicide bombing in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood were laid to
rest in Rishon Lezion.
First came the burials of five members of the Nehmad family
from Rishon Lezion, who had come to Jerusalem for a bar
mitzva celebration: Shlomo, 40; his wife, Gafnit, 32; and
their daughters Shiraz, seven, and Liran, three,
Hy"d.
The couple's 15-year-old nephew, Shauli Nehmad Hy"d,
murdered when he went out to bring his family wine for
havdallah, was laid to rest minutes later. His brother
is in very serious condition in the hospital.
Next came the funerals of the two children of Shlomo's
sister, Ronit: Lidor Ilan Hy"d, 12, and his 18-month-
old sister, Oriah Hy"d.
The couple have one remaining child, Noi, eight, who is
recovering from her wounds in the hospital.
The seven members of the Nehmad family who perished in the
bombing were the most members of one family killed in a
terror attack since five members of the Schijveschuurder
family were killed last August in a suicide bombing at
Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria.
The two other victims of the attack, Tzofia Ya'arit Eliahu
Hy"d, 23, and her seven-month-old son, Ya'acov Avraham
Eliahu Hy"d, who lived in Beit Yisrael, were laid to
rest in Moshav Noam, south of Kiryat Gat.
The young mother, who was newly religious and had moved to
Jerusalem in search of a more spiritual life together with
her husband (who was not wounded in the attack), was on her
way home down the block from the site of the attack when the
bomber set off his explosives.
Twenty-four hours after the attack, five people remained in
serious conditiony at Jerusalem's two Hadassah-University
Hospitals.
The site of the attack has been targeted before. Last
February, a car bomb ripped through a side street in the
neighborhood just meters away from the last attack, but
miraculously failed to cause any serious injury.
Upon hearing the news of the attack, hundreds of Palestinians
at the Dehaishe refugee camp staged an impromptu celebration,
chanting, "Revenge, revenge," and firing guns into the
air.
Initial IDF findings indicated only one Palestinian sniper
perpetrated the attack that left ten dead north of Ofra. Only
after his carbine was damaged by the soldiers' fire did he
flee the area unharmed, heading toward the village of Sinjil
in Palestinian Authority-controlled territory. According to
Palestinian sources, three terrorists participated in the
attack.
Throughout the day, Palestinians jeered that a sniper armed
with a carbine dating back to World War II succeeded in
shooting "occupation" soldiers armed with M-16 assault
rifles.
According to the IDF, the soldiers manning the roadblock were
all reservists from the Engineering Corps. They had
difficulty at first spotting the sniper due to the hilly
terrain on both sides of the road.
On Sunday night the security cabinet approved an operation
recommended by the IDF to put constant military pressure on
the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian terrorist
groups.
The meeting lasted for more than three hours and Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-
Eliezer reportedly argued over how far to go in punishing PA
Chairman Yasser Arafat for the attacks.
Sharon and Ben-Eliezer had argued already Saturday night
about whether to allow Arafat to leave Ramallah, as Ben-
Eliezer requested, or whether the tanks should return to
surround Arafat's office, as Sharon wanted.
Sharon said at the cabinet meeting earlier in the day that
additional pressure is needed on Arafat, calling the
Palestinian Authority an "empire of lies." Ben-Eliezer agreed
that the Fatah and Tanzim organizations, which are part of
the PA, have been responsible for almost all of the recent
deadly attacks.
Ben-Eliezer told ministers that the attacks of the past few
days occurred despite Israel's efforts to bring about calm
and the assurances of senior PA officials at security
meetings that they would try to do likewise. But Ben-Eliezer
said larger attacks were averted in Haifa and elsewhere.
Shin-Bet chief Avi Dichter said there is no truth to reports
of a Palestinian decision to target only settlers and
soldiers. He said Arafat is disconnected from reality, and he
does not consider his current situation as bad as those
around him believe it is. He joined Sharon and Ben-Eliezer in
blaming Arafat for the upsurge in violence.
Sharon rejected charges from the Left that the Jenin and
Balata operations helped bring about the attacks, saying the
charges are politically motivated. Cabinet secretary Gideon
Sa'ar said the sheer quantity of weapons confiscated, arrests
made, and weapons factories destroyed proved the necessity of
the operation.
Ministers from the Right and protesters outside both the
cabinet and security cabinet meetings called on the
government to give the IDF a free hand in other Palestinian
areas and topple the PA.
Construction and Housing Minister Natan Sharansky (Yisrael
Ba'aliya) dismissed European claims of moral equivalence
between the IDF's actions in the refugee camps and the
attacks on Israeli civilians. "We entered Balata to destroy a
Katyusha factory," Sharansky said. "Our enemies try to kill
as many children as possible."
