After car rammed into crowd, residents' anger was hardly restrained.
By ABE SELIGkikar tzahal attack scene 224 88 ap(photo credit: AP)
As Kassem Mughrabi was ramming his car into a crowd of IDF soldiers near the Old City on Monday night, it's hard to imagine that the 19 year-old's predecessors had not inspired him.
Mughrabi's own neighborhood of Jebl Mukaber was home to Alaa Abu Dhein, the 26 year-old gunman who in March walked into the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem's Kiryat Moshe neighborhood and gunned down eighteen young men, killing eight of them.
Dhein's rampage was the first, Mughrabi's the latest, in what appears to be a repeating pattern of terrorist attacks perpetrated by east Jerusalem residents strongly determined to take the lives of others before taking their own.
On Monday night, it was clear that such repeated acts of terror, the sudden and random scenes of Jerusalem streets in chaos, had begun to take their toll on this city, and residents' anger was hardly restrained.
After the wounded had been cleared from the scene, and Mughrabi's BMW sat eerily still, crumpled against a nearby building, throngs of young religious men and pub-goers from downtown bars and restaurants poured into the area to have a look at the damage done.
Police were tense, and Mughrabi's body was searched for explosives, as security forces feared he had put on a bomb-belt before departing for his 10-minute drive from Jebl Mukaber to Jaffa Street. The minutes wore on, and the crowd's anger began boiling over.
Various bystanders shouted political slogans and police tightened their grip, as it seemed a riot was slowly mounting amongst the crowd.
Border guards pushed people behind red tape, a cop with a loudspeaker caused a near stampede, and people pushed in closer to get a look at the white sheet covering Mughrabi's body, his legs sticking out onto the concrete.
Suddenly, two Arabs who allegedly threw bottles near the crowd were pounced on by a mob across the street. From a distance, a sea of people could be seen waving back and forth as the two were chased down.
Mounted police came through on horseback, sending the crowd scattering and news crews diving for their cameras. Special police forces patrolled the streets on motorcycles, jumping the curb to chase off bystanders and disperse the crowd.
Bystanders fell back without further incident as police and medical crews continued clearing the area.
The reaction from the crowd was a marked difference from previous post-attack scenes in the city over the past six months. After a construction worker from east Jerusalem went on a rampage with his bulldozer in July, killing three people and wounding at least 45, a feeling more of shock than anger had resonated on the street. The police concentrated only on gathering evidence, and had had no problem with crowd control whatsoever.
While police have said that the random nature of such attacks is precisely what makes them so hard to prevent, it remains to be seen what sort of action will be taken to try and prevent them. Defense Minister Ehud Barak repeated calls on Tuesday for the terrorists' homes to be torn down as a preventive measure - a measure an internal army report found to be ineffective.
As the scene quieted down, a young man with a shofar stood on a nearby corner and blew three or four long tones. People walked home, or back downtown, and the city began going back to normal.
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