Philissa Cramer
Six people were shot to death and at least six others gravely injured in a shooting on a Jerusalem bus stop on Monday morning, in the kind of terror attack that has become rare in recent years.
Hamas issued a statement celebrating the attack, which ended when the two men carrying it out were killed. An off-duty security officer and a civilian with a gun license reportedly killed the gunmen, Palestinians from the West Bank.
The attack prompted immediate recrimination among politicians as well as military raids on West Bank villages near Ramallah. Israel has a policy of demolishing the homes of those who commit terror attacks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, speaking at the scene of the attack, each lay blame with the Supreme Court, which ruled on Sunday that security prisoners in Israeli prisons must be given more food. Netanyahu canceled a planned court date in his corruption trial to respond to the shooting.
The shooting was the deadliest attack in the city since seven people were killed at a synagogue in a nearby neighborhood in January 2023, before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
It took place at a bus stop at Ramot Junction, an area in Jerusalem’s northwest where roads from multiple directions converge and where two children were killed in a terror ramming in early 2023. Three people were shot to death at a bus stop in the same neighborhood in November 2023, during the first ceasefire in the war in Gaza, by two brothers who had been affiliated with Hamas; a fourth person was killed by an IDF soldier who said he mistook him for a terrorist. A bombing at the same bus stop had killed two the previous year.
The latest attack comes as President Donald Trump is pressing for an end the war in Gaza. He said on TruthSocial on Sunday that the Israelis had accepted his latest terms for an end to the conflict that would include the release of all 48 hostages in Gaza. “I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!” Trump wrote.
