2008 Jerusalem bulldozer attack

Jerusalem Bulldozer attack
Location of attack on Jaffa Road
Location	Jerusalem, Israel
Date	July 2, 2008 11:55am – 12:10pm (UTC+3)
Target	Israeli civilians
Attack type	Vehicle attack
Deaths	4 (Including perpetrator)
Injured	30+
Perpetrators	Hussam Taysir Duwait, resident of East Jerusalem

On July 2, 2008, a man identified as a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem named Hussam Taysir Duwait (Also reffered to as Hussam Duwiyat, Hossam Dawyyat, or erroneously as Jabr Duwait), attacked several cars on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, Israel using a front-end loader, killing three people and wounding at least thirty other pedestrians, before being shot to death. A motive for the attack could not immediately be determined, but police at the scene referred to the incident as a terrorist attack.

This attack marks the second incident in 2008 in which an Arab from East Jerusalem using his Israeli ID Card freely accessed West Jerusalem to commit a violent act, the first being the Mercaz HaRav massacre in early March 2008.

Details

Preliminary investigations suggest the Caterpillar 966 front-end loader was taken from a nearby construction site on Jaffa Road, where the Jerusalem Light Rail was being built. The perpetrator then drove the vehicle against traffic, before hitting an Egged public bus near the city's old Central Bus Station. The impact flipped the bus onto its side, hitting nearby vehicles and pedestrians. The perpetrator, Hussam Taysir Duwait was also heard yelling "Allahu Akbar" during the attack. After a traffic policewoman had shot the driver, the vehicle came to a halt but then started again and crushed another car, killing another person.

The following moments, during which the perpetrator was shot and killed have been filmed from at least two different angles, which accounts for the greater level of directly available descriptive detail in comparison to the original attack which is documented only through eyewitnesses on the scene as well as images that were taken mostly after the incident itself.

At the point when the vehicle had stopped for the first time, three men had climbed up to the cabin: Moshe Klessner, a 20-year old off-duty soldier from Jerusalem who had recently enlisted as an elite Israel Defense Forces commando, armed civilian Oron Ben Shimon, who is a regional manager of a security firm, as well as an unnamed policeman. While struggling with the driver inside the cabin, trying to get his feet off the accelerator and take over the wheel, Oron shouted at Klessner to shoot the driver. Klessner then grabbed Oron's handgun and killed Duwait with three shots to the head at point blank range. After the vehicle had immediately come to a halt again, motorcycle policeman Eli Mizrahi climbed the cabin and fired two more shots. One witness is quoted as saying that Duwait was armed and 'shooting at a police officer'.

Haaretz quotes Moshe Klessner as saying that "I got closer to the bulldozer, the whole time looking for my weapon to shoot him." Coincidentally, Klessner is the brother-in-law of Captain David Shapira, the paratrooper officer who shot and killed the perpetrator in the Mercaz HaRav massacre.

Victims

The victims in the attack were two women, Bat Sheva Unterman and Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, and a man, Jean Raloy.

• Mrs. Unterman, a kindergarten teacher, and the wife of Ido Unterman, grandson of former Chief rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman was in her car at the scene of the attack. Her 6-month-old daughter was pulled from the car just before it was hit.
• Originally of Austria, Elizabeth Goren-Friedman worked as a teacher in a school for the blind.
• Jean Raloy, an air-conditioner technician who lived in the Gilo neighborhood, was the third person killed.

Motive

While Israeli authorities are said to have been "labeling it a terrorist attack", police chief Dudi Cohen is quoted as saying that "the attacker appeared to be acting alone" and that "it looks as if it was a spontaneous act."

Shimon Kokos, the lawyer of the perpetrator's family, said that Hussam "had not belonged to any militant organization and may have acted out of temporary insanity" and that, "had [he] not not been killed during his rampage, it is doubtful whether he would have been judged fit to stand trial."

A Jewish ex-girlfriend of Duwait, who has a child with him, commented that "he really didn't hate Jews. The fact is that he was with me. It's insanity, but the motivation was not nationalist" and also that his bad temper may have been related to his "[smoking] a lot of drugs."

The perpetrator, a 32-year-old father of two from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sur Baher, was carrying an Israeli identity card, being hired by a local construction firm for the Jerusalem Light Rail.

"My son never spoke of plans to carry out such an attack, if he had I would have tried to prevent it," Duwait's father, Tayseer told The Media Line as police officers were about to question him.

Israeli Border Guard officers ordered the Dawiyat family of the Arab neighborhood of Sur Baher in Jerusalem to remove the mourning tent they erected in the neighborhood for their son. A Border Guard patrol passing through the area identified the construction of the tent and ordered the family to remove it. The family then disassembled the tent without any noted resistance.

The Jerusalem attack is "a natural response to Israeli aggression", a Hamas spokesman said Wednesday, some two hours after the attack. Nevertheless, he stressed that Hamas did not know who was behind the attack.

The Israeli radio station Kol Yisrael reported that an Israeli-Arab militant organization called the Galilee Liberators Brigades (Hebrew: גדודי חופשיי הגליל) claimed responsibility for the attack. The same group also claimed responsibility for the Mercaz HaRav massacre. The claim has thus far been treated with skepticism by the Israeli police and media.

Reactions

• Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General expressed condolences to the relatives of the dead victims, and wishes for a speedy recovery to the injured.
• Israeli human rights group B'Tselem released a statement condemning the attack, adding that "Attacks aimed at civilians are immoral, inhuman, and illegal. Intentional killing of civilians is a grave breach of international humanitarian law and is considered a war crime that can never be justified, whatever the circumstances may be."
• Israeli President Shimon Peres expressed pride in the speedy actions of the soldier who fired at and killed the attacker.
• Dozens of Palestinians from Sur Baher began shouting joyfully when news came of the terror attack by one of their neighbors Wednesday, HNN reported. The attacker's family members gathered in his house. According to an Al Jazeera report, the mother of the perpetrator was "crying out on the rooftop of their home, calling her son a martyr."
• US PresidentGeorge W Bush spoke over the phone with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert to express his condolences with the people of Israel, for the "murderous terrorist attack."
• Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert mentioned that "There is no way to fence-off the Arabs of east Jerusalem and every home of a potential terrorist," and that "We need to stop the terror attacks carried out by east Jerusalem Arabs, and if that must be done through means of deterrence or the demolition of a home – then so be it." B'Tselem has condemned the plans as "illegal collective punishment."
• British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned the attack, calling it a "horrific act."

See also

• Marvin Heemeyer