2008 Jerusalem bulldozer attack |
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On July 2, 2008, a man identified as a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem named Hussam Taysir Duwait (Also referred to as Hussam Duwiyat[2], Hossam Dawyyat[3], or erroneously as Jabr Duwait[4]), 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.[5][2] A motive for the attack could not immediately be determined, but police at the scene referred to the incident as a terrorist attack.[6] 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,[7] the first being the Mercaz HaRav massacre in early March 2008.
DetailsPreliminary investigations suggest the Caterpillar 966 front-end loader was taken from a nearby construction site on Jaffa Road. 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.[8] The perpetrator, Hussam Taysir Duwait was also heard yelling "Allahu Akbar" during the attack.[7] 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.[2] The following moments, during which the perpetrator was shot and killed have been filmed from at least two different angles,[9] 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: A 20-year old off-duty soldier from Jerusalem who had recently enlisted as an elite Israel Defense Forces commando and whose name has been published as "Moshe Plesser"[10][4], armed civilian Oron Ben Shimon, who is a regional manager of a security firm, as well as an unnamed policeman.[11] According to Oron, while he was struggling with the driver inside the cabin, trying to get his feet off the accelerator and take over the wheel, he shouted at the soldier to shoot the driver.[11] The soldier then grabbed Oron's handgun and killed Duwait with three shots to the head at point blank range.[8][12] After the vehicle had immediately come to a halt again, motorcycle policeman Eli Mizrahi climbed the cabin and fired two more shots.[8][13] One witness is quoted as saying that Duwait was armed and 'shooting at a police officer'.[14] Haaretz quotes the soldier as saying that "I got closer to the bulldozer, the whole time looking for my weapon to shoot him."[8] Coincidentally, the soldier is the brother-in-law of Captain David Shapira, the paratrooper officer who shot and killed the perpetrator in the Mercaz HaRav massacre.[11] VictimsThe victims in the attack were two women, Bat Sheva Unterman and Elizabeth Goren-Friedman, and a man, Jean Raloy.
MotiveIsraeli authorities are labeling it a terrorist attack, although they say there is no clear motive, the perpetrator acted alone, and it is not known if he had links to any terrorist organization."[6]. Three Palastinian organizations took responsibility for the attack: the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the Galilee Freedom Battalion (Hebrew: גדודי חופשיי הגליל), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Despite the Palestinian claims of responsibility, Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said the attacker appeared to be acting alone and that "it looks as if it was a spontaneous act."[13] Some two hours after the attack, a Hamas spokesman said that the attack is "a natural response to Israeli aggression." Nevertheless, he stressed that Hamas did not know who was behind the attack.[15] 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 been killed during his rampage, it is doubtful whether he would have been judged fit to stand trial."[16] A Jewish ex-girlfriend of Duwait, 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."[17] Other people have gone on the record as well alleging regular drug abuse by Duwait, one neighbour saying that he was "a drug addict [...]. He'd shoot up all the time. [...] He was really just a junkie."[18] 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.[6] "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.[19] 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.citation needed."[13] AftermathIsraeli 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.[20][21] Bulldozer attack of July 22On July 22, another east Jerusalem Arab resident, Ghassan Abu Tir, rammed his tractor into cars and a bus on King David street in Jerusalem. He injured 24 and destroyed a bus and five cars before being shot dead by a motorist and a policeman. The attack was seen as a copycat act of to the July 2 attack, causing fears of repeated copycat acts in an emerging new terrorist tactic.[22][23] The attack happened just down the road from the hotel where Barack Obama was due to stay at for his Democrat world tour.[24] Reactions
Arab mediaAccording to MEMRI, in July 5, 2008 Al-Jazeera TV dedicated a program to Dalal Al-Maghrabi, one of the pepetrators of the Coastal Road massacre. In the program, Al-Maghrabis' sister, Rashida, "saluted the soul" of Hussam Taysir Duwait (name transcribed as Husam Dweidat) calling him a "hero" and a "martyr". [32] See also Wikinews has related news:
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