Zionist political violence refers to acts of violence or terrorism committed by Zionists in support of establishing and maintaining a Jewish state in Palestine. These actions have been carried out by individuals, paramilitary groups, and the Israeli government, from the early 20th century to the present day, as part of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yahya Abd-al-Latif Ayyash was the chief bombmaker of Hamas and the leader of the West Bank battalion of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. In that capacity, he earned the nickname "the Engineer". Ayyash is credited with advancing the technique of suicide bombings against Israel by Palestinian militant groups. The bombings he orchestrated killed approximately 90 Israelis, many of them civilians. He was assassinated by the Shin Bet on January 5, 1996, through a booby-trapped mobile phone.
The Popular Resistance Committees is a coalition of a number of armed Palestinian groups opposed to what they regard as the conciliatory approach of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah towards Israel.
The coastal road massacre occurred on 11 March 1978, when Palestinian militants hijacked a bus on the Coastal Highway of Israel and murdered its occupants; 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children, were killed as a result of the attack while 76 more were wounded. The attack was planned by the influential Palestinian militant leader Khalil al-Wazir and carried out by Fatah, a Palestinian nationalist party co-founded by al-Wazir and Yasser Arafat in 1959. The initial plan of the militants was to seize a luxury hotel in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv and take tourists and foreign ambassadors hostage to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.
On July 2, 2008, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem identified as Hussam Taysir Duwait attacked several cars on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem in a vehicle-ramming attack using a front-end loader, killing three civilians and wounding at least thirty other pedestrians, before being shot to death. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that an inquiry indicated the attacker had been acting alone. A motive for the attack could not immediately be determined, but police at the scene referred to the incident as a terrorist attack. Three copycat attacks have occurred since then.
On 22 September 2008, a Palestinian drove a BMW saloon car into a group of civilians and off-duty soldiers in a terrorist ramming attack in Jerusalem, injuring 19 people. Stratfor Global Intelligence analysts say this attack represents a new terrorist tactic which is less lethal but could prove more difficult to prevent than suicide bombing.
Events in the year 2004 in Israel.
A bomb attack was carried out in a bus station in downtown Jerusalem, near the Jerusalem International Convention Center compound on 23 March 2011 at 15:00 (GMT+2). The bomb was placed near a bus stop, and detonated when Egged bus No.74 passed the station.
The 2011 Tel Aviv nightclub attack was a combined vehicular assault and stabbing attack which occurred on 29 August 2011 when a Palestinian attacker stole an Israeli taxi cab and rammed it into a police checkpoint guarding the popular nightclub, Haoman 17, in Tel Aviv which was filled with 2,000 Israeli teenagers. After crashing into the checkpoint, the attacker jumped out of the vehicle and began stabbing people. Four civilians, four police officers, and the assailant were injured in the attack. The assailant was living illegally in Israel at the time of the attack.
On the morning of 18 November 2014, two Palestinian men from Jerusalem entered Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue, in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem, and attacked the praying congregants with axes, knives, and a gun. They killed four dual-nationality worshippers, and critically wounded a responding Druze Israeli police officer, who later died of his wounds. They also injured seven male worshippers, one of whom never woke up from a coma and died 11 months later. The two attackers were then shot dead by the police.
A vehicle-ramming attack occurred in Jerusalem on 8 January 2017. A truck driven by an Arab citizen of Israel plowed into a group of uniformed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers disembarking from a bus on the Armon Hanatziv Esplanade in East Jerusalem's East Talpiot neighborhood, close to the Trotner park and UNTSO headquarters, killing four and injuring 15.
On 16 June 2017, two Palestinian men opened fire on Israeli police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem, injuring four of them. An additional attacker stabbed a policewoman, she was critically injured, and later died in hospital. All three attackers were shot and killed by the Israeli authorities.
On the morning of 26 September 2017, a Palestinian gunman opened fire at Israeli security guards at the entrance gate of Har Adar, an Israeli settlement and affluent residential border community of Jerusalem located largely on the other side of the green line within the West Bank. Three Israeli security guards were killed and one was injured. The gunman was shot dead by the remaining guards. The Israeli authorities described the attack as an 'act of terrorism'.
The following is a timeline of events during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2018.
On March 22, 2022, four people were killed and two more were injured during a stabbing and vehicle-ramming attack by an Islamic State supporter in Beersheba, Israel.
On 23 November 2022, two bomb attacks were carried out at bus stops on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Two civilians were killed and 46 were injured. They were the first bombings carried out on Israeli civilians since the 2016 Jerusalem bus bombing, in which a suicide bomber injured at least 22 people.
On 27 January 2023, a Palestinian gunman killed at least seven civilians in the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov, in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank. The suspect is also reported as having shot at worshippers exiting a synagogue, and, according to the police, was shot and killed after he opened fire on the attending officers. It was Israel's deadliest peacetime Palestinian attack since the Jerusalem yeshiva attack in 2008.
The killing of Yuval Castleman occurred on 30 November 2023, during the Givat Shaul shooting in Jerusalem when Yuval Doron Castleman, an Israeli civilian, charged at the attackers in the shooting, killing one of them, and was subsequently shot by Aviad Freija, an IDF soldier, who mistook him for a terrorist.
