Four Killed in Jerusalem Synagogue Complex
By Isabel Kershner And Jodi Rudoren, NY Times, Nov. 18, 2014
JERUSALEM--Two assailants armed with a gun, knives and axes stormed a synagogue complex in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of West Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, killing at least four worshipers during morning prayers, according to the police. The attack was one of the deadliest in the city in several years.
Police officers who arrived at the scene shot and killed the attackers. Within two hours, Israeli security forces had stormed Jabel Mukaber, the Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem where the assailants were believed to have lived, spraying tear gas at their family home and into hills of olive trees.
A neighbor identified the attackers as Odai and Ghassan Abu Jamal, who were cousins. She said that Ghassan was in his 30s and had two children, and that Odai was in his 20s and unmarried.
Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israel police, said an investigation was underway to see whether the suspects were “affiliated with any terrorist organization like Hamas or Islamic Jihad.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the attack “the direct result of the incitement” led by Hamas, the militant Palestinian faction, and by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, and set a security consultation for noon. “We will respond with a heavy hand to the brutal murder of Jews who came to pray and were eliminated by despicable murderers,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Abbas condemned “the killing of civilians from any side” and “the whole cycle of violence,” according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency. It was his first official condemnation of violence during the recent spate of deadly attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the West Bank.
At least a dozen others at the synagogue were wounded, according to the director of Magen David Adom, the Israeli ambulance service. Two, including a police officer, were in critical condition and two others were in serious condition at Hadassah Hospital, a spokeswoman said.
The attack came at a time of heightened tensions in Jerusalem fueled in large part by a dispute over a sensitive holy site in the Old City known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
In recent weeks, Palestinian individuals have carried out several vehicular assaults and stabbings against Israelis in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Tel Aviv, killing three civilians, a soldier and a border police officer. In another episode, a Palestinian gunman from East Jerusalem attempted to assassinate a prominent Jewish activist who has pushed for more Jewish access and demanded that Jews be allowed to pray at the holy site. The gunman was later killed in a shootout with the police; the Jewish activist, Yehuda Glick, survived.
Tensions rose again in the city on Monday after a Palestinian driver for an Israeli bus company was found hanged in his bus. The driver’s family said that he had been the victim of a lynching by Jewish extremists, setting off riots in the driver’s neighborhood, though the police said an autopsy, which was also attended by an expert of the family’s choice, found that there had been no foul play and ruled the death a suicide.
Right-wing Israeli politicians blamed Mr. Abbas of the Palestinian Authority for the attack. They say that Mr. Abbas has been fomenting violence by accusing Israel of trying to change the status quo at the holy site, at which non-Muslims are allowed to visit only during certain hours and are not to pray openly.
Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he does not intend to change the rules, but members of his Likud Party and ministers in his government are among those who have supported legislation calling for increased Jewish access and prayer and who have visited the site, fueling tensions.
“The hands that held the axes are of the terrorists but the voice is the voice of Abu Mazen,” declared Yuval Steinitz, the minister of strategic affairs, using an alternate name for Mr. Abbas. “Whoever calls on Muslims to defend the mosque in Al Aqsa using all the means against Jews bears direct responsibility for the horrific pogrom at the synagogue in Har Nof and all the attacks and deadly riots in Jerusalem.”
In a statement, Naftali Bennett, the economy minister and head of the Jewish Home party, called Mr. Abbas “one of the greatest terrorists the Palestinian people sprouted” and said he “bears direct responsibility for Jewish blood spilled in tallit and tefillin.”
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, said Mr. Abbas had “deliberately turned the conflict into a religious conflict between Jews and Muslims.”
