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Israel on High Alert Following Deadly Attack on Jewish Seminary
7 Mar 08
Eight students at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem were shot dead by a Palestinian gunman in the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in the city since 2004; the killings, which come amidst an upsurge of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, strike a fresh blow to U.S.-led international peace efforts.
Global Insight Perspective | | Significance | Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the attack marked a “defining moment”, suggesting that an Israeli military response is imminent. Jerusalemites, who for the past four years have been cushioned from the violence that has been largely confined to Gaza and bordering Israeli cities, yesterday became the victims of an escalating pattern of violence between Israel and the Palestinians. | Implications | News of the attack was met by protesters chanting “let the army go into Gaza”. The military noose around Gaza, the epicentre of violence between Israel and Palestinian militants, will tighten following yesterday’s attack. The Jerusalem bloodbath also illustrates the unrealistic timeline—set in the U.S. state of Maryland last year—of forging a viable peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians before the year’s end. | Outlook | Since 2004, stringent security measures and the strategy of sealing the violence within Gaza have given Jersualemites a brittle sense of security; yesterday’s shooting was a wake-up call that the violence in Gaza can be transported to the heart of Israel. The bustle of tourist activity in Jerusalem will quickly recover, although yesterday’s shooting provides a taste of the daily carnage that has been confined to Gaza. |
Shattering the Brittle Calm The frantic pace of nightlife in Jerusalem was tempered yesterday by news that eight Jewish students, many of them teenagers, were gunned down at the Mercaz Harav seminary in Jerusalem. The gunman—who, according to reports, was a Palestinian from East Jerusalem—entered the seminary brandishing an AK-47 and proceeded to shoot the students until he was gunned down by an off-duty army officer. The incident is the deadliest in the city since 2004, when simultaneous suicide bomb attacks in Jerusalem killed 19 Israeli civilians, marking the climax of attacks that were the hallmarks of Palestinian militants during the height of the Palestinian intifada. The Mercaz Hervaz seminary, with a student body of 700, is situated in Kiryat Moshe, close to the Knesset parliament building and other organs of the Israeli government; the religious school, founded in 1924, is a national and religious institution steeped in Zionist history, and its alumni serve at the highest echelons of the Israeli military and security agencies. News of the attack was met by angry protests outside the seminary by demonstrators demanding “revenge” and “death to Arabs”, according to reports. Alumni of Mercaz Harav are likely to have been among the more vociferous opponents of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005—one of the school's founding principles emphasises the Jewish people’s claim to the biblical land of Israel, with the seminary having cultivated long-standing ties with a number of settler movements. Israel’s reaction to the carnage in Jersualem was swift and unequivocal. Security forces have placed Israeli cities on high alert, warning against complacency to further attacks. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the attack would prove a “defining moment”, as Israel’s top military brass deliberated its options; the army is already engaged in a major offensive against Palestinian militants aimed at stopping the barrage of rockets into Israeli cities bordering the Gaza Strip. Hamas, which is on the front lines of Israel’s military onslaught, threw more fuel onto the fire by praising the attack and adding “this will not be the last”; this was followed by celebratory rallies organised by several Palestinian factions. Hamas’ response will further compound the plight of 1.6 million Gazans who are at the epicentre of the violence between Israel and Palestinian militants; more than 100 Gazans—many of them civilians—have been killed in recent weeks, amid a relentless wave of rocket attacks and retaliation by the Israeli military. Yesterday, hours before the shooting in Jerusalem, U.K.-based charities and development agencies issued a strongly worded report saying that the military and economic stranglehold around Gaza had pushed the territory to the very edge of an internal implosion. Yesterday’s attack will also further complicate U.S.-led international efforts to forge a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The latest peace initiative, which was unveiled at Annapolis (Maryland) talks in November 2007, was already reeling under the weight of Israel’s latest military offensive in Gaza; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had little choice but to sever talks with Israel following the recent spate of killings of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military onslaught. Abbas only agreed to resume talks with the Israelis at the request of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was back in the region earlier this week. The shooting in Jerusalem—and the predictable Israeli military response—will further constrain Abbas’ already-limited ability to forge peace with Israel, especially in line with the ambitious time frame set by U.S. President George W. Bush. British Foreign Secretary David Milliband has rightly said that yesterday’s killings “strike an arrow at the heart of the peace process so recently revived”. Indeed, as the violence seeps out, in a repeat of a past that Israelis have struggled to put behind them, a meaningful peace process is proving an ever more elusive goal. Outlook and Implications Jerusalem’s vulnerability, which had been masked by the bustle of daily life and the tourist activity that was boosted by the lull in suicide attacks since 2004, was exposed by yesterday's attacks. Although stringent security checks and imposing military walls are effective deterrents against attack they are by no means a cast-iron guarantee. Life in Jerusalem will quickly resume its normal pace, but yesterday's attack was a wake-up call and a warning that the strategy of ‘violence containment’ within Gaza is bound to come under strain. Unless Israel and the Palestinians are able to forge a comprehensive peace settlement—one that integrates rather than isolates Gaza—and in accordance with internal realities and not driven by cosmetic external timeframes, the fragile security afforded to Israeli cities will be tragically punctuated, as witnessed by yesterday’s bloodbath in Jerusalem.
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