After deadly Tel Aviv attack, Israel suspends Palestinian permits
The Israeli military on June 9 revoked permits for 83,000 Palestinians to visit Israel and said it would send hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank after a Palestinian gun attack that killed four Israelis in Tel Aviv.
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| Israeli soldiers stand guard at the entrance of Yatta near the West Bank city of Hebron June 9, 2016. |
The assailants came from near Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They dressed in suits and ties and posed as customers at a restaurant, ordering a drink and a chocolate brownie before pulling out automatic weapons and opening fire, sending diners fleeing in panic.
Two women and two men were killed and six others were wounded. The attack followed a lull in recent weeks after what had been near-daily stabbings and shootings on Israeli streets.
It was the deadliest single incident since an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in November 2014 that killed five.
The Tel Aviv gunmen, cousins in their 20s who, security experts said, appeared to have entered Israel without permits, were quickly apprehended. One of them was shot and wounded.
The other, in a bizarre twist, was picked up inside the nearby apartment of an off-duty police officer who initially mistook the attacker for an innocent bystander fleeing the scene, the police said.
"It is clear that they spent time planning and training and choosing their target," Barak Ben-Zur, former head of research at Israel's Shin Bet domestic security agency, told reporters.
"They got some support, although we don't know for sure who their supporters are," he said, adding that they appeared to have used improvised automatic weapons smuggled into Israel.
The attack, as families were enjoying a warm evening out at the tree-lined Sarona market, took place a few hundred yards from the imposing Defence Ministry in the center of Tel Aviv, a city that has seen far less violence than Jerusalem.
After consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the military said it was rescinding some 83,000 permits issued to Palestinians from the West Bank to visit relatives in Israel during the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
