2002 French Hill Suicide Bombing

The French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem had already been targeted during the Second Intifada. On March 17, 2002, suicide bomber Akram Ishak Abdullah Nabatiti detonated at the junction, injuring 25 people. That separate attack was attributed to a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operational network in Bethlehem led by Mohamed Tamari.[4]

The June 19 attack occurred one day after a Hamas suicide bomber killed 19 people aboard a bus at Jerusalem's Patt junction.[1][5] Jerusalem District Police received warnings during June 19 of a planned suicide bombing in the city and deployed officers and roadblocks, but the attack was not prevented.[6]

Shortly after 7:00 p.m. on June 19, 2002, a suicide bomber arrived at the crowded bus stop and hitchhiking post at the French Hill intersection as commuters were returning home from work.[1] He ran past Border Police officers toward the junction and detonated the explosive device at the stop. An officer who pursued him was very seriously injured.[6] A U.S. State Department chronology also records that the bomber had jumped from a car and run into a concrete bus shelter before detonating the device he was wearing.[7]

Initial reports listed six people dead, one person in critical condition and four in serious condition, with 41 injured people taken to hospitals. One of the wounded died the following morning, bringing the final death toll to seven.[6] The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility. A spokesman for the Fatah-associated Raed Karmi Martyrs Brigades had issued an earlier claim, while Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat publicly condemned the bombing.[6]

The bomber was identified as Sayid Waddah Hamid Awada, rendered as Sa'id Awada in the U.S. court record. He was described as a 17-year-old Nablus resident and Fatah/Tanzim operative. An Israeli government study stated that the attack was planned and carried out by a Fatah terrorist-operative infrastructure in Nablus.[2][8]

The seven people killed were:[1]

• Noa Alon, 60, of Ofra, a kindergarten teacher who had organized a musical performance for local kindergartens only hours before the bombing. She traveled to the junction with her daughter Penina and five-year-old granddaughter Gal after a community event.[9]
• Gal Eisenman, 5, of Ma'ale Adumim, Noa Alon's granddaughter.[1]
• Michal Franklin, 22, of Jerusalem, who had completed three years of study toward a bachelor's degree in educational counseling and history at Orot School in Elkana. Her body was identified through DNA testing at the Abu Kabir forensic institute.[9]
• Tatiana Igelski, 43, originally from Moldova. Her son Dima provided a blood sample used in identifying her. Her daughter Vika, who was in Ukraine, turned 15 the day after the bombing.[9]
• Hadassah Jungreis, 20, of Migdal Haemek.[1]
• Gila Sara Kessler, 19, of Eli, who had completed her first year of national service in a Jewish Agency unit that communicated with Jewish communities abroad. She left work earlier than usual that afternoon to travel home but never arrived.[9]
• Shmuel Yerushalmi, 17, of Shilo.[1]

Penina and her approximately one-and-a-half-year-old son Shagai were hospitalized in intensive care after the bombing. A video of the community celebration Noa Alon had organized earlier that day helped identify Alon and Gal by their clothing.[9]

Among those seriously wounded was Shaul Mandelkorn, then 18, who had been among the first passengers to leave a bus at the junction when the bomb detonated. His father, Leonard Mandelkorn, later testified about the lasting injuries: "He doesn't have a single square centimeter of his body that is not scarred."[3] The family's account of Shaul's injuries and their effects became part of the trial record in subsequent U.S. federal litigation.[3]

The French Hill bombing was among the attacks addressed in Sokolow et al. v. PLO et al., a civil lawsuit brought in U.S. federal court by American victims and their families against the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants bore responsibility for attacks committed by employees or by organizations receiving their material support.[3]

In a district-court ruling included with the defendants' appellate brief, the court found that bomber Sa'id Awada was not a PA or PLO employee. An Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs report had described PA official Naef Abu Sharkh as being "behind" the bombing but did not explain his individual involvement. The court held that this evidence was insufficient to show that Abu Sharkh acted within the scope of his employment and therefore did not permit the Mandelkorn plaintiffs to proceed against the PA under a vicarious-liability theory based on the French Hill attack.[8]

Sources consistently give a final death toll of seven, but reported injury totals range from 30 to 50. The Jewish Virtual Library lists 50 injured, while the U.S. State Department records 43, including two U.S. citizens.[1][7] The initial ynet report says 41 injured people were taken to hospitals.[6] The Congressional Research Service and the plaintiffs' appellate brief each give 35 injured.[5][3] An Israeli government map publication lists 30, while another Israeli government study reports approximately 39.[10][2] The sources do not explain the differing counting methods.

The latter government study also labels the attack as occurring on July 19, 2002, and similarly labels the preceding Patt junction bombing as occurring on July 18.[2] Contemporaneous reporting and multiple other records date the French Hill attack to June 19, 2002, which is the date used here.[6][1]