Jerusalem Terror Attack a Harsh Reminder of the Second Intifada

Wednesday marked four months since the double murder of Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Bennett, who were stabbed to death in the Old City of Jerusalem on October 3. Wednesday’s terror attack happened in a plaza outside the Old City, on the other side of Damasus Gate.

According to Haaretz’s records, in the months since the murders of Lavi and Bennett, Jerusalem has experienced 34 terror attacks or attempts. Nine happened at or around Damascus Gate. Many others were within a radius of hundreds of meters it.

Mohammed Kostiro observed most of the attacks from behind a coffee urn opposite Damascus Gate. “This time we heard a lot of gunfire. It wasn’t like kids with knives. You see it’s going somewhere worse,” he says. “I think people are abandoning the knives now and taking up rifles, which means we’re moving into a new phase.”

Most of the terror attacks in the latest wave of violence to rock Jerusalem were indeed stabbing attempts that ended with injury to one or more people and the death of the attacker, or attackers. In a few cases, the terrorists managed to kill one or more of their victims. Most of the attacks were in familiar territory – Haguy Street in the Old City of Jerusalem, or Route 1, or stations of the light rail system.

But the record for terror in Jerusalem goes to Damascus Gate, which has induced the police to allocate larger forces to that area. One Border Police team has been permanently stationed behind a barrier at the entrance to the gateway. Another is positioned above the plaza, in a position to observe the gate. The officers spend most of the day checking identity cards and conducting body searches for knives, to the anger of Old City residents. Yet just the other day, a Border Police team found a knife on a 14 year old.

There is no question that the attacks dramatically affect the city, including through the virtual disappearance of foreign and domestic tourism. A lot of merchants who had depended on tourism are going broke. Meanwhile, the day-to-day friction between Palestinian youngsters and police has escalated in just about all the neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and the sense of personal security has been impaired.

But the routine of terror attacks is just another sort of routine, and the city has adjusted.

Jerusalemites, Palestinians and Israelis alike, rethink their habits, constrain their space and think twice before crossing the imaginary line bisecting the city. Merchants cut back staff and costs, and cross their fingers for better days. The police continue to deploy expanded forces. Under these constraints, life goes on.

Yet Wednesday’s attack deviated from the pattern, the routine, in almost every parameter – the number of attackers, their choice of weapons, their origin, their age and the extent of their planning. Only correct, courageous action by the police, and good luck, brought the attack to its end with the death of only one person, the fighter Hadar Cohen, and the injury of her colleague, with no other casualties.

The Jerusalem police think the three attackers hadn’t meant to do their deed just where they did – Damascus Gate – and certainly not in front of the police’s noses.

In contrast to the spontaneity of the isolated attackers, this incident involved a team that planned in advance and invested money and effort in obtaining the weapons, smuggling them into Jerusalem and penetrating the city. The police suspect they meant to carry out a mass murder in the city center or on the light rail. There is a rail station two minutes’ walk from where the attack went down.

If the police are right, the scenario is clear for anyone to imagine. Three youngsters with weapons and bombs carrying out a combined attack on civilians. The pattern of Wednesday’s attack is horrifyingly reminiscent of the second intifada, when organized units from outside Jerusalem would come to the city, as a convenient target for mass attacks. This, as Kostiro says, would be a completely new phase.