Israel mourns religious-school victims

Thousands of Israelis today gathered for the funerals of the eight religious students killed by a Palestinian gunman in Jerusalem.

Outside their bullet-scarred seminary a rabbi recited Hebrew psalms, the crowd repeating after him, in memory of the dead.

People packed nearby balconies to observe the ceremony, after which the victims, one 26 and the rest between ages 15 and 19, were taken for burial.

The Mercaz Harav seminary’s library was crowded with studying students when Alaa Abu Dheim, 20, walked in and opened fire.

It was the first major attack in Jerusalem in four years, and the deadliest incident l since a suicide bomber killed 11 people in Tel Aviv in 2006.

The shooting came on the heels of a surge in fighting between Israelis and Gaza militants, and further threatened already faltering peace talks.

After the attack, crowds gathered outside the library and screamed for revenge, shouting, “Death to Arabs,” while in Hamas-controlled Gaza thousands of jubilant Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate.

At mosques in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, many residents performed prayers of thanksgiving.

About 7,000 Gazans marched in the streets of Jebaliya to celebrate the attack. In the southern town of Rafah, residents distributed sweets to drivers and militants fired mortars in celebration.

An Israeli police spokesman said the gunman was a driver from Jabel Mukaber, a district in east Jerusalem, where Palestinian residents hold Israeli ID cards that give them freedom of movement in Israel.

Residents in Jabel Mukaber said Abu Dheim, 20, had been a driver at the seminary he attacked. They said he had been arrested by Israeli authorities four months ago and then released two months later.

Meanwhile his family set up a mourning tent and hung green Hamas flags outside their home.

Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president with whom Israel is negotiating a peace agreement, condemned the attack. But today there were some Israeli lawmakers calling on the government to break off talks.

“The government must immediately halt all negotiations and eradicate terrorism in every way possible,” said David Rotem of the hardline Yisrael Beiteinu party. “Later, when we have someone to talk with, we can hold negotiations,” he said.

Others rejected that call. “It’s the job of a responsible leadership, a logical leadership, to say in moments like these, looking at the blood, at the cries for revenge ... that we, at least we in Israel, will do everything we can in order not to be dragged into this cycle,” moderate politician Yossi Beilin said.

An Israeli official said the talks would continue “so as not to punish moderate Palestinians for actions by people who are not just our enemies but theirs as well.”

Hamas militants, who have been battling Israel during a week-long surge in violence in Gaza, praised the attack in a statement but stopped just short of claiming responsibility.

Abu Dheim attacked his victims after walking through the seminary’s main gate. He carried an assault rifle and pistol, and used both.

He was finally shot dead by a graduate who is an army officer and lives nearby.

The seminary, a prestigious centre of Jewish studies, largely produced the ideology behind the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank and educated its leaders. It serves some 400 high school students, young Israeli soldiers and adults, and many of them carry arms.