Israel fears growing trend after new Jerusalem incident

Monday’s was the latest incident in the past three months following vehicle attacks by Palestinians in the Holy City, sparking calls from Israeli media for stepped up security measures and harsher punitive actions.

It took place near Tzahal Square, just outside the 400-year-old walls of Jerusalem’s Old City and a few hundred meters (yards) from Jaffa Gate, a major tourist thoroughfare.

"There aren’t any intelligence warnings, there isn’t any deterrence and, worst of all, the security establishment doesn’t have any solutions," read an editorial in Israel’s mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"Demolishing murderers’ homes and punishing their families is cruel and inhuman. But does anyone have a better solution for stopping this wave?"

Haaretz newspaper, paraphrasing Prime Minister Ehud Olmerts remarks after the previous attacks, said "anyone who thinks Israel’s occupation in east Jerusalem must continue will have to take into account more bulldozer attacks."

Police identified the driver of the car as Qasem Mughrabi, a 19-year-old from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebel Mukaber, and said he carried out the attack after his cousin refused to marry him.

Security forces surrounded the man’s family home to prevent any reprisal attacks and forbade the family from erecting a funeral tent.

Police have meanwhile boosted security across the city ahead of the Jewish high holidays in October, when large numbers of people are expected to visit Jerusalem and its holy sites.

The incident late on Monday came just hours after Israeli President Shimon Peres asked Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to form a new government after the resignation of Olmert, who has been dogged by corruption allegations.

Livni, 50, a former Mossad spy who replaced Olmert as head of the centrist Kadima party in a leadership vote on Wednesday, could become Israel’s second woman prime minister after Golda Meir, who served from 1969 to 1974.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the head of the Labor party and a crucial coalition ally, said the home of the attacker had to be "destroyed as soon as possible" to dissuade others from launching similar acts.

Exactly two months earlier, on July 22, a Palestinian wounded 16 people when he turned an earth mover on passers-by and vehicles in Jerusalem.

That incident mimicked one 10 days earlier in which another Palestinian, also in an earth mover, killed three Israelis and injured more than 45.

On March 6, a Palestinian opened fire at a Jewish religious school, killing eight Israeli students in the worst attack the city had seen in years.

All three men were shot dead immediately after the attacks.

In each instance, the attackers hailed from east Jerusalem, prompting widespread calls for a return to a policy of demolishing the family homes of Palestinians who launch deadly attacks.

The practice, used widely in the first years of the 2000 Palestinian uprising, stopped in 2005 after then military chief of staff Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon said in a report it was ineffective as a deterrent.

More than 250,000 Palestinians live in east Jerusalem. They hold special ID cards that allow them to travel and work in Israel, but are not Israeli citizens.

Photo: AFP