Jericho bus firebombing

Last updated

Jericho bus firebombing
Jericho bus firebombing 1988.jpg
Charred bus remains
Native nameהפיגוע בקו 961
LocationNear Jericho, on Highway 90, West Bank
DateOctober 30, 1988;35 years ago (1988-10-30)
c. 19:45 pm (UTC+2)
Attack type
 Ambush, firebombing
Weapons3 molotov cocktails
Deaths5 Israelis (including 3 children)
Injured5 Israelis
Perpetrators Palestinian youths
No. of participants
3

The Jericho bus firebombing was a Palestinian terrorist attack that occurred during the First Intifada outside the West Bank town of Jericho. In the attack, a bus was targeted by militants wielding molotov cocktails, and destroyed. It resulted in the deaths of 5 Israelis, and the wounding of 5 others.

Contents

Two assailants were arrested immediately, and imprisoned by Israel. They were released after 25 years as part of the renewal of peace negotiations with the Palestinian National Authority.

Incident

On October 30, 1988, two Palestinian youths from the same extended family, Mahmud Salim Suliman Abu Khraesh of Jericho and Jum'a Ibrahim Juma Adam of Ramallah, were playing a game of cards at a cafe in Jericho, when one suggested to the other, "Let's throw another molotov cocktail." [1] [2] The youths had been jailed previously for attempted firebombing. [3]

Later that evening, an Egged bus No. 961, connecting Tiberias and Jerusalem via the Jordan Valley, was making its way along Highway 90 with 22 passengers aboard. Among the passengers on the bus were Rabbi Eliezer Mordechai Weiss, his 26-year-old wife Rachel, a second-grade teacher in Tiberias, and their sons Netanel, 3, Rephael, 2, and Ephraim, 9+1⁄2 months, who were on their way to a family affair in Jerusalem. Rachel was a 10th-generation Jerusalemite, and one of 18 children born to Yitzchak Shlomo Zilberman, founder of Yeshivat Aderet Eliyahu. They originally had been sitting together in the front of the bus, but Rachel and the children moved to the back in order not to disturb her husband's Torah study. [2] [4] [5] [6]

An Israeli military jeep passed by first, but it was not targeted. As the bus approached Jericho, the attackers appeared out of a banana grove, and forced the bus to slow down. They hurled 3 molotov cocktails at it, setting the bus alight. Most of the passengers reacted quickly, and were able to escape the burning bus unharmed. But as the flames began to spread inside the bus, Rachel Weiss went into shock, then threw herself on her children in a vain attempt to keep them alive. Israel Defence Forces (IDF) corporal David Delarosa, a passenger who had exited the bus, noticed Weiss sitting near the back door, and begged her to come out, but she refused. When he tried to pull her out, he heard her say Shema Yisrael, and he understood that she wished to remain with her children. Weiss perished along with her 3 children. Delarosa died a month and a half later from burns and smoke inhalation. [1] [6] [7]

Among the wounded were Dov Bloom, 35, and Sandy, 33, a couple from kibbutz Ma'ale Gilboa, who had made aliyah from Pittsburgh 9 years earlier. [2] [3] [8]

Weiss and her sons were buried the following day in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery. [2] The Israeli settlement of Rehelim was subsequently named after Weiss. [9]

Response

Israel reacted swiftly to the attack, clamping a curfew on Jericho, and rounded up dozens of suspects for questioning. By the end of the day, the two Palestinians had confessed to engineering the attack. Adam was immediately arrested, and Abu Khraesh was taken into custody on November 3. Their homes were demolished by security forces. Before dawn the next day, a bulldozer began ripping out the groves of banana, orange, and date trees the attackers had used as cover. A few hours later, hundreds of trees had been uprooted. [1] [5]

Aftermath

The attack, which occurred one day before the November 1 elections to the 12th Israeli Knesset, galvanized Israelis, and influenced their voting. The result was the re-election of a right-leaning Likud party coalition. [5] [10] [11] [12]

Prisoner release

On December 30, 2013, Israel released Abu Khraesh from prison, along with some 77 others, who were part of a group of 104 prisoners [13] in Israeli prisons whose crimes were committed prior to the Oslo Accords. The release was part of a deal in the resumption of long-stalled peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority. [1] [14] [15]

Adam was in the last batch of Palestinian prisoners to be released. However, Israel reneged, [16] saying that the Palestinians also did not live up to their commitments under the framework. Adam and 28 others remain in Israeli prisons. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">October 2000 protests in Israel</span> Civil unrest among Israeli Arabs

The October 2000 protests, also known as October 2000 events, were a series of protests in Arab villages in northern Israel in October 2000 that turned violent, escalating into rioting by Israeli Arabs, which led to counter-rioting by Israeli Jews and clashes with the Israel Police and ending in the deaths of 13 Arab demonstrators and 1 Israeli Jew.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coastal Road massacre</span> 1978 hijacking of an Israeli bus by Palestinian militants near Tel Aviv

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 in order to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Palestinian political violence</span> Violence committed by Palestinian nationalists and Islamists

Palestinian political violence refers to actions carried out by Palestinians with the intent to achieve political objectives that can involve the use of force, some of which are considered acts of terror, and often carried out in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Common objectives of political violence by Palestinian nationalists include self-determination in and sovereignty over Palestine, or the "liberation of Palestine" and recognition of a Palestinian state, either in place of both Israel and the Palestinian territories, or solely in the Palestinian territories. Some perpetrators of these acts support the dismantling of the State of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Arab state. More limited goals include the release of Palestinian prisoners or the Palestinian right of return. Other motivations include personal grievances, trauma or revenge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rehelim</span> Israeli settlement in the West Bank

Rehelim is an Israeli settlement in the northern West Bank. Located on Route 60, between Kfar Tapuach and Eli, east of Ariel and adjacent to the Palestinian towns of Yatma and Qabalan, it falls under the jurisdiction of Shomron Regional Council. In 2022, it had a population of 1,062. In January 2021, under Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government decided to legalize the illegal, nearby outpost of Nofei Nehemia, by reclassifying it as a “neighborhood” of the Rehelim settlement, which itself was an illegal outpost that was legalized a few years prior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tel Aviv–Jerusalem bus 405 suicide attack</span> 1989 suicide attack on civilians by Palestinian Islamic Jihad

The Tel Aviv–Jerusalem bus 405 attack was a suicide attack which occurred on 6 July 1989, during the First Intifada, and was carried out by Abd al-Hadi Ghanim of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. On a crowded Egged commuter bus line No. 405 en route from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem, Ghanim seized the steering wheel of the bus, running it off a steep cliff into a ravine in the area of Qiryat Ye'arim. Sixteen civilians—including two Canadians and one American—died in the attack, and 27 were wounded.

In 2009, clashes between Muslim Palestinians and Israeli police erupted on September 27, 2009, and continued to late October. Violence spread through East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank, and included throwing of Molotov cocktails and stones at Israeli security forces and civilians. Israeli police responded with arrests of rioters and sporadic age-based restriction of access to the Temple Mount. Several dozen rioters, police and Israeli civilians have been injured.

Events in the year 1988 in Israel.

Events in the year 2003 in the Palestinian territories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange</span> 2011 deal between Israel and Hamas

The Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, also known as Wafa al-Ahrar, followed a 2011 agreement between Israel and Hamas to release Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for 1,027 prisoners — almost all Palestinians and Arab-Israelis, although there were also a Ukrainian, a Jordanian and a Syrian. Two hundred and eighty of these had been sentenced to life in prison for planning and perpetrating various attacks against Israeli targets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ahlam Tamimi</span> Jordanian woman (born 1980) known for her role in the Sbarro restaurant bombing

Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi is a Jordanian national known for assisting in carrying out the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in 2001. She was convicted by an Israeli military tribunal and received multiple life sentences, but was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange. She hosts a television show about Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

This is a list of individual incidents and statistical breakdowns of incidents of violence between Israel and Palestinian dissident factions in 2014 as part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

List of violent events related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict occurring in the second half of 2015.

On 29 June 2015, Hamas gunmen opened fire on a civilian vehicle moving along Israeli Route 60 near Shvut Rachel in the West Bank. Four Israelis in the car were wounded and rushed to hospital, where one died. The suspects were later arrested.

This is a Timeline of events related to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict during 2016.

The following is a timeline of events during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2018.

Alexander Levlovich was an Israeli who was killed in East Jerusalem on 13 September 2015, by Palestinians who hurled rocks at the car he was driving. He died in hospital the following day. Levlovich was the first casualty in the 2015-2016 wave of violence in Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The wave of violence began when Muslim youths gathered at the al-Aqsa Mosque, with the intention of blocking visits by Jews to the Temple Mount on the eve of the Rosh Hashanah holiday. The youths barricaded themselves inside the Mosque, hurling rocks and flares at police as the police used tear gas and threw stun grenades in an attempt to quell the violence. Social media campaigns rapidly spread news of the rioting, which quickly sparked rock-throwing and stabbing attacks in nearby neighborhoods.

The following is a list of events during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in 2022.

Events in the year 2022 in the Palestinian territories.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Bear, Shalom (December 28, 2013) "List of Terrorists to be Released, and their Victims", The Jewish Press
  2. 1 2 3 4 Gradstein, Linda (November 1, 1988) "Israel Buries Victims Of Firebombing", Sun Sentinel
  3. 1 2 Ben-Gedalyahu, Tzvi (July 28, 2013) "US Bus Bomb Victims Relive Horror over Terrorists’ Release", The Jewish Press
  4. ↑ Miller, Elhanan (July 22, 2013) "Let the Prisoners Die in Jail, Just as My Brother Lies Dead on Mt. Herzl", The Times of Israel
  5. 1 2 3 Meisels, Andrew and Gradstein, Linda (November 1, 1988) "Firebombing Of Bus May Tilt Israeli Election To The Right", Sun Sentinel
  6. 1 2 "Ephraim Weiss" Archived 2016-10-27 at the Wayback Machine , Victim's Memorial Site
  7. ↑ Dvir, Noam (July 21, 2013) אם שכולה: "אסור שמשפחת רוצח בני תראה אותו", Ynet
  8. ↑ Lord, Rich (October 23, 2015). "Living his father's prophecy". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  9. ↑ Tamar el-Or and Gideon Aran (1995). "Giving birth to a settlement" (PDF). Gender & Society. 9: 60–78. doi:10.1177/089124395009001004. S2CID   143556233.
  10. ↑ (December 9, 1988) "A Year of Palestinian Revolt", The New York Times
  11. ↑ Brinkley, Joel (November 1, 1988). "Campaign in Israel Eclipsed by Deaths In Attack by Arabs". The New York Times. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  12. ↑ Frankel, Glenn (November 1, 1988). "Firebombing Deaths Stun, Anger Israelis". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 2, 2017.
  13. ↑ "Palestinian report: Israel to release fourth group of prisoners within 48 hours". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. March 30, 2014. Retrieved February 17, 2022.
  14. ↑ (July 28, 2013) "Group: List of Prisoners Expected to be Freed", Ma'an News Agency
  15. ↑ (December 27, 2013) "Palestinians Threaten ICC Action over Settlements", i24 News
  16. ↑ "Palestinian Official: Israel Says It Won't Release Last Batch of Prisoners". Haaretz. Retrieved February 17, 2022.
  17. ↑ "Palestinian prisoner in Israel, 51, completed 32 years behind bars of a life sentence for resisting the occupation". Wafa . Retrieved February 17, 2022.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.