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Israel Imposes Travel Restrictions on Palestinians After Tel Aviv Attack Israelis Find Rare Moment of Solidarity in Aftermath of Tel Aviv Shootings
(about 4 hours later)
TEL AVIV — Israel suspended thousands of travel permits to Israel for Palestinians, sent two battalions of soldiers to the West Bank and blockaded a town there on Thursday, a day after gunmen killed four people in a crowded restaurant district of Tel Aviv. TEL AVIV — Israel’s new defense minister, the avowed hard-liner Avigdor Lieberman, drank a cappuccino Thursday at the popular restaurant where two Palestinian gunmen in black suits and ties had killed four Israeli civilians the night before.
The assault on a cafe in the Sarona shopping complex on Wednesday, just as a nine-month wave of stabbing and shooting attacks appeared to have ebbed, was particularly brazen as it was very close to Israel’s military headquarters. Surrounded by armed guards and police officers, Mr. Lieberman said he had come “first and foremost to salute the people of Tel Aviv,” who, he said, “know how to return to life and prove that life is stronger than terror.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack “coldblooded murder by atrocious terrorists,” and he praised a security guard and a police officer who had helped to apprehend the gunmen. The assailants, identified as two Palestinian cousins, are in custody. Minutes earlier, Shelly Yacimovich of the center-left Labor Party bicycled up and said she had moved all the day’s meetings to Sarona, the restaurant and shopping complex where the attack occurred. “It was important for me to come here,” she said. “We cannot let the terrorists win and upend our lives.”
“We will take a series of offensive and defensive steps, we will locate anyone who cooperated with this attack, and we will act firmly and intelligently to fight terrorism,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement. Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky and colleagues from the central Tel Aviv branch of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement erected a table outside the scene of the shootings — Max Brenner, a chocolate bar and cafe, and Benedict, an adjacent all-day breakfast joint. They encouraged mostly secular passers-by to pray for the dead. Mr. Gerlitzky urged a tougher policy against Israel’s enemies to “put fear in their hearts.”
Avigdor Lieberman, a hard-liner who was recently appointed defense minister, traveled to the scene of the shooting and had coffee at a cafe in a display of resolve, before joining other members of the country’s security cabinet to discuss the situation. Shocked waiters and cooks in striped pants hugged each other while diners ate on the Max Brenner patio. On a patch of lawn opposite, dozens of youths from a pre-army leadership course sat in a circle and sang peace songs.
“I come here first and foremost to salute the people of Tel Aviv, who have absorbed a difficult incident again, a harsh terrorist attack,” he told reporters. “Despite this, they know how to return to life and prove that life is stronger than terror.” In the aftermath of the killings, Israelis found a rare moment of solidarity and comfort in their determination to show resolve and demonstrate a swift return to routine.
He said he would not give details on the steps that would be taken, but added, “I have no intention of sufficing with talk.” After an eight-month wave of Palestinian attacks that have killed about 30 Israelis and two American visitors — and that had seemed to be ebbing — the killings represent a first test for Mr. Lieberman as defense minister. But despite years of tough rhetoric about how he would counter terrorism, he seemed to have recognized the limits of power.
The Israeli military said it was sending hundreds of troops from two battalions, drawn from infantry and special forces units, to Yatta, the town where the authorities said the gunmen lived. Even after dozens of stabbings, car rammings and shooting attacks in Jerusalem, the West Bank and cities around Israel, the assault on Wednesday evening was particularly brazen. It took place in the shadow of Israel’s military and Defense Ministry headquarters, across the road from Sarona.
Yatta, at the southern end of the West Bank, between Hebron and the Israeli barrier that separates the West Bank from nearby Israeli cities like Beersheba, was surrounded by troops, with all movements in and out of the town blocked except for humanitarian and medical reasons. The Israeli military authorities responded on Thursday by temporarily suspending 83,000 special travel permits granted to West Bank Palestinians for family visits to Israel during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. They also suspended permits for Palestinians from Gaza to travel to Jerusalem for prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque.
The town is relatively easy to cut off from the rest of the West Bank because it is far south of most major Palestinian population centers. Israel said that it had also frozen 83,000 special permits that had been issued to West Bank Palestinians for family visits to Israel during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and that it had suspended the travel of Palestinians to Jerusalem from Gaza for prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound. After a meeting of the security cabinet at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office toughened the response, saying the Ramadan permits had been “canceled.”
Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, released a statement on Twitter calling the Tel Aviv attack “a natural response to the occupation and desecration of Al Aqsa Mosque” and a sign of “the failure of the occupation” of Palestinian territories. The authorities said they had revoked 204 work permits held by relatives of the gunmen, who are cousins. The military sent two battalions of soldiers to bolster its forces in the West Bank, and said the Palestinian town where the gunmen lived, Yatta, in the southern West Bank, had been sealed off. An Israeli agency that coordinates civilian affairs with the Palestinians said that only humanitarian and medical cases could enter and leave Yatta.
Such language is typical of the group’s rhetoric, and Hamas did not claim responsibility for the attack. The Palestinians and human rights groups have denounced measures such as these, and the demolition of the family homes of assailants, another frequent Israeli tactic, as collective punishment that only encourages more violence.
The four victims of the shooting were identified on Thursday as Ido Ben Ari, 42, whose wife was also wounded in the assault; Ilana Naveh, 39, a mother of four daughters; Michael Feige, 58, a sociologist and anthropologist at Ben-Gurion University; and Mila Mishayev, a woman in her early 30s who friends said was engaged to be married. Several other people were hospitalized with injuries. Mr. Lieberman has, in the past, demanded much harsher measures, including the death penalty, for Palestinians convicted of terrorism.
Dr. Feige was a noted scholar of Israeli society, collective memory and political myth, according to Ben-Gurion University, which issued a statement after his death. His book “Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories” won a prize from the Association for Israel Studies in 2010. Sitting at Max Brenner shortly before the security cabinet meeting, he warned, “I have no intention of divulging details of what we will do. But I am sure that we have no intention of only making do with talk.”
Oren Yiftachel, head of the department of interdisciplinary studies at the university, said Dr. Feige “was one of those who was head and shoulders above the crowd.” Many analysts had predicted that Mr. Lieberman, a former foreign minister and leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, would be more pragmatic as defense minister. There was no mention of the death penalty after the security cabinet meeting.
“He was not political, despite researching political subjects,” he added. Instead, in addition to the cancellation of permits, it said that work would soon begin on closing gaps in the southern part of Israel’s West Bank barrier that it constructed with the stated purpose of preventing the entry of Palestinian assailants.
Adi Portugez, a friend, told the news site Ynet that Dr. Feige was “simply a man of peace,” while a former student, Devora Ginsburg, praised him as “good-hearted and modest.” Ahmad Mussa Mahmara, the father of one of the gunmen, who were equipped with crude rifles, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that he was surprised by his son’s act.
“We didn’t expect this,” Mr. Mahmara was quoted as saying. “My son is young and has been in Jordan for the past four years, and just came here for the past five months. He does not have any political affiliation.” Some other Palestinians celebrated the killings, according to reports.
The four victims were identified as Ido Ben Ari, 42, whose wife was wounded in the assault; Ilana Naveh, 39, a mother of four daughters; Michael Feige, 58, a sociologist and anthropologist at Ben-Gurion University; and Mila Mishayev, a woman in her early 30s who friends said had been engaged to be married.
Dr. Feige was a noted scholar of Israeli society, according to a Ben-Gurion University statement. His book, “Settling in the Hearts: Jewish Fundamentalism in the Occupied Territories” won a prize from the Association for Israel Studies in 2010.
Four people remained hospitalized in a Tel Aviv hospital with moderate injuries. One of the gunmen was being treated in the same hospital for gunshot wounds from a security guard and the other was in custody, according to the police.
Tal Sharabi, 22, a waiter at Benedict, where some victims had been sitting, said he witnessed the shooting. “They killed people who, a moment earlier, I had been asking if the food was tasty and if everything was O.K.,” he said.
Besides politicians, some residents of this coastal city came to Max Brenner and Benedict to express solidarity.
“The one thing that does not affect us is fear,” said Yoni Itzhak, 36, the chief executive of Operativa, a Tel Aviv-based strategic consulting company, as he sipped an espresso milkshake.
Others expressed cynicism.
“So suddenly everybody is together, we are all one people!” one man said to a friend as they walked passed the politicians, the rabbis and the singing youths.
Surveying the diners, another man muttered into his cellphone, “So that’s it. They’ve gone back to routine.”
Details emerged on Thursday of a bungled response to the attack that left many Israelis incredulous. One gunman, who had discarded his weapon, fled to a nearby residential building, asked an off-duty police officer for water and was taken into the officer’s apartment for refuge, according to the police.
Only after the officer went down to the street to help with the pursuit of the assailants did he realize that the man he had left upstairs with his wife and her mother was dressed in the same attire as the gunman who had been wounded. He returned to his apartment with backup and overpowered the fugitive.