On 6 March 2008, a lone Palestinian gunman shot multiple students at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, a religious school in West Jerusalem. Eight students and the assailant were killed. Eleven more were wounded, five of them placed in serious to critical condition.
The attack began at 8:30 p.m. local time and ended sixteen minutes later. The attacker was stopped by long-time Mercaz HaRav student Yitzhak Dadon and off-duty Israel Defense Forces Captain David Shapira, who killed the perpetrator with their personal firearms.
The attack itself was praised by Hamas and, according to a subsequent poll, was supported by 84 percent of the Palestinian population, the highest result showing support for violence in 15 years, which the pollster concluded was the result of recent actions by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. It was condemned in official statements by various countries around the world.
The shooting
The attacker, Alaa Abu Dheim, age 26, from the Arab neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber in East Jerusalem, who, according to his family, worked as a driver for a private company that made deliveries to the yeshiva, entered the building carrying a box concealing an AKM along with several magazines, later firing as many as 500–600 rounds.
Dheim entered the courtyard of the yeshiva at the main entrance, put down the box and took out the weapon, and opened fire on a group of students from the Yashlatz yeshiva high school and Mercaz HaRav who were standing at the entrance, killing three of them. He then went into the yeshiva library and fired at the students there, killing five and wounding nine, three of them seriously. Seventeen students managed to escape into an adjacent classroom and blocked the door with a heavy table.
Ten minutes after the shooting began, two police officers, one male and one female, arrived on the scene. The policewoman stopped a nearby passenger bus and prevented it from approaching, while the policeman entered the courtyard with a rifle. Dheim noticed him through the glass door of the yeshiva library and shot at him, but the officer, not knowing the precise source of the fire and afraid of harming innocents, did not return the fire and took cover. Immediately after the police arrived, Captain David Shapira, a graduate of the yeshiva and an officer in the Israel Defense Forces who lived nearby but was not on duty at the time, arrived at the scene with his M-16 rifle, while Yitzhak Dadon, a yeshiva student who had a gun, positioned himself on the roof of a nearby building. The police officer in the courtyard warned Shapira not to enter, but Shapira ignored him, and entered the building near the library door and positioned himself in a nearby corridor. Sixteen minutes after the shooting began, Dheim emerged from the library, and Dadon and Shapira opened fire, killing him.
Timeline
8:30 pm – Shooting begins. 8:36 pm – First call received by a Magen David Adom operator from a yeshiva student inside the building requesting emergency services. 8:37 pm – First ambulances dispatched. 8:40 pm – The first police car arrives at the scene; officer does not enter. 8:41 pm – First paramedic on site reports of one wounded. 8:42 pm – Shapira enters the yeshiva. 8:45 pm – Two detectives arrive on the scene. 8:46 pm – Attacker killed. 8:51 pm – 'A.R.A.N.' declared (multiple wounded event). 8:57 pm – MADA operator reports 'end of shooting' and orders paramedics into yeshiva.
Assailant
The gunman, Alaa Abu Dheim (, ), a resident of Jerusalem, was, according to his family, a driver who delivered goods to the yeshiva; this was later denied by the head of the yeshiva. The gunman's family said he was an intensely religious Muslim but not a member of any militant group.
Abu Dheim, like other Arab residents of East Jerusalem who choose not to have Israeli citizenship, carried an Israeli identity card that granted him freedom of movement and travel throughout Israel. On 5 January 2009, the Israeli High Court of Justice authorized the demolition of Abu Dheim's family home.
Motive
Although Abu Dhaim left behind no statement describing his motive, his sister, Iman Abu Dhaim, told the Associated Press that he had been radicalized by the violence in Gaza, where 126 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces from Wednesday through Monday, in response to rocket fire from Palestinian terrorist groups based in Gaza.