Wounded ax-attack boy is son of jailed Jewish bomb-plot cell member

Ofer Gamliel was sent to prison for 15 years for a failed bomb plot against a Arab girls school in east Jerusalem.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Shlomo Nativ bat ayin 248 88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Shlomo Nativ bat ayin 248 88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Yair Gamliel, the seven-year-old boy whose skull was fractured by an ax-wielding terrorist in the settlement of Bat Ayin on Thursday, is the son of Ofer Gamliel, one of three men convicted in 2003 and sent to prison for 15 years for a failed bomb plot against a Arab girls school in east Jerusalem. The Prisons Service said it would allow Gamliel to visit his son at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem for a few hours on Thursday. Prisons Service spokesman Yaron Zamir told The Jerusalem Post the visit could only go ahead with an escort of Service staff. "We are preparing to accompany Gamliel to the hospital," Zamir said. "He [Gamliel] is choosing the time of the visit." In 2003, the Jerusalem District Court convicted Gamliel, together with Yarden Morag and Shlomo Dvir, of attempted murder. The cell came to be known as the Bat Ayin Underground. It had planted an explosives-packed cart in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of A-Tur in 2002, between Mokassed Hospital and an Arab girls elementary school across the street. The bomb was found by police officers passing through the area. A police bomb squad safely detonated the explosives and the police and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) traced them back to the Jewish militant cell set on causing heavy Arab casualties. At the end of the trial, the judges said the defendants had carefully planned the location of the attack, choosing an area that did not routinely have Israel Police or Border Police patrols, or any Israeli passersby. The bomb was made up of two slabs of explosive material, two gas canisters, 100 liters of fuel and a large number of screws. The defendants were driven by a desire to revenge Palestinian terrorist attacks, the judges said.