January 6: Suicide Bombings in Tel Aviv

Two simultaneous suicide bombings killed twenty-three people and wounded more than a hundred near a bus station in an immigrant neighborhood of Tel Aviv on this date in 2003. Both the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack, then denied the claim. The suicide terrorists were determined to be two Palestinian men from Nablus. Their victims included two Romanians, three Chinese, a Ghanaian, a Bulgarian, and a Ukrainian, several of whom were illegal immigrant workers in Israel. Israel retaliated with missile attacks in Gaza that wounded eight, and closed three West Bank universities. Six weeks earlier, a Palestinian bomber had killed eleven and wounded fifty on a bus in Jerusalem, which had been at least the 200th terrorist attack in Israel since the signing of the Oslo agreements in 1993. Palestinians argue that “they are engaged in a war against an occupying power and that religion and international law permit the use of any means in resistance to occupation; that they are retaliating against Israel killing members of armed groups and Palestinians generally; that striking at civilians is the only way they can make an impact upon a powerful adversary; that Israelis generally or settlers in particular are not civilians. . . . The deliberate killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian armed groups amounts to crimes against humanity.” --Amnesty International