Bulldozer Attack: Cut Off East Jerusalem, Says Israeli Minister

Israel's deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, yesterday called for some Arab districts of East Jerusalem to be cut off from the city in the wake of the attack by a Palestinian construction worker who killed three people when he seized control of a bulldozer in the city center.

The attacker, Hussam Dwayat, 30, drove a large bulldozer from a construction site into oncoming traffic on Wednesday, crushing cars and toppling a bus before he was eventually shot dead at the wheel. He was from the Sur Baher district of East Jerusalem and was the second Palestinian resident of Jerusalem to carry out a major attack in the city in the past four months.

Others in the government called for his family's house to be demolished.

Ramon said the route of the Israel's West Bank barrier should be changed to cut off the Arab areas of East Jerusalem. He told Israel's army radio that the Arab districts of the city "were never in Jerusalem".

His words will reignite the debate within Israel about the future of Jerusalem, which both Israel and the Palestinians claim as their capital. So far the barrier circles around East Jerusalem, placing most of the city on the Israeli side and cutting it off from the West Bank, and there is a strong force in Israeli politics that resists any attempt to divide the city.

Others, including the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, proposed demolishing the attacker's family house. Olmert was quoted as saying: "We have to act with a tough hand, to negate social rights and to destroy immediately the houses of every terrorist from Jerusalem."

Ehud Barak, the defence minister, also pressed for the demolition of Dwayat's house. "Demolishing houses has a deterring effect that conveys an unequivocal message about Israel's determination to fight this," he said in a letter to the defence ministry's legal adviser. There have been demolitions of such houses in the past in Jerusalem, using a 1945 law that dates back to the British mandate, but the policy was halted three years ago after it was decided to have no deterrent effect.

It appears that Dwayat was acting alone in Wednesday's attack. He had a criminal record, which included drugs offenses, and unusually had been married to a Jewish woman. The man's brother, Issam Dwayat, said he had not been linked to any of the armed groups. "My brother did not belong to any organization," he told the Israeli news website Ynet. "He wasn't even a religious person. After terror attacks he always used to say: 'What is this nonsense? Why do we need this?'"

Police were at the family house yesterday and told relatives that all signs of mourning were forbidden.