A day after an Arab construction worker drove his bulldozer on a deadly rampage down a busy street in downtown Jerusalem, crushing pedestrians and cars and killing three people, Arab city workers were back on the job, prompting many a dubious glance from Israeli passersby. In the wake of the attack, Israelis are coming to the realization that they have a serious threat in their midst and not just on the other side of the much-maligned security fence.
“This is someone who works for the government [i.e., the Jerusalem Municipality]. It’s not someone out of nowhere, out of the [Palestinian] territories,” Jerusalem resident David Bitton, 24, told Israel Today. “We have hundreds of them working on the street.”
Bitton said it is a mistake to let Arab workers start working the next day like nothing happened. “You show them that it’s okay, and then they will do it again.”
“The Arabs are trying to show, we don’t need suicide bombers, we don’t need shootings, we don’t need RPGs,” he continued. “We’ll kill you with cars. This is a psychological game.”
Cars, incidentally, were considered the “safe” alternative to a public transportation system targeted by Palestinian suicide bombers, but after people were crushed in their own vehicles a new, deadly variety of terror attack was introduced to Israel.
Several civilians and police officers ran toward the bulldozer, firing at the driver until he was shot point blank by an off-duty soldier. The dramatic footage was captured on video and beamed around the world.
The driver of the bulldozer managed to cover about 500 yards (meters) on Jaffa Road, the main street in Jerusalem, before he was stopped. Along the way he crushed a car, killing a woman inside. She threw her infant child out of the window as the bulldozer bore down on the vehicle, saving its life.
The bulldozer came to a stop atop another car, which, when it was extricated hours later, revealed a mound of twisted metal and mangled tires with colorful children’s toys embedded in the wreckage. Several other vehicles, including two public buses, were also severely damaged in the onslaught.
The attack was the fifth this year by Arab residents of East Jerusalem, who have Israeli identity cards and enjoy freedom of movement, unlike Palestinians from the territories. In March, another East Jerusalem Arab shot and killed eight students at a yeshiva (Jewish seminary) in the city. Earlier in the year, two Jewish municipality workers were nearly lynched as they drove through downtown East Jerusalem, and a Jewish security guard was shot and wounded in the Old City after an Arab snatched his gun.
The attacks threaten to upset a delicate coexistence in Jerusalem, where two-thirds of residents are Jewish and one-third Arab. They do not interact much socially and live in separate neighborhoods, but many Arabs work daily in Jewish areas of Jerusalem and the people get along.
Ibrahim Ramzi, an Arab resident who works near the scene of the attack, wept after observing the destruction firsthand. He said an act like this can never be justified by the Koran.
“How can any man ever arrive at a thing like this?” Ramzi said. “I want to put this out of my memory.”
Many Jerusalem Arabs condemn such attacks and insist that acts of terrorism emanating from their communities are isolated incidents and not the signs of a hostile undercurrent. But suspicions among Jewish residents of the city are growing with every attack.
