June 2016 Tel Aviv Shooting

The attack occurred during Ramadan, which began on June 6 that year, and followed other terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv during the preceding year.[5] Its perpetrators were Muhammad and Khalid Muhamra, Palestinian cousins from Yatta, near Hebron in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[6] Both were 21 years old at the time of the shooting, and neither had a previous security record.[5] They did not have permits to enter Israel.[5]

Preparations extended over approximately six months and involved the two cousins and a third man, Younis Ayash Musa Zayn.[7] Zayn helped plan the operation and acquire its firearms.[2] The initial intended target was not a restaurant or shopping area: the planners considered an attack on passengers traveling on the Tel Aviv–Haifa railway line.[2] They collected information about train schedules, routes, station entrances and exits, and passenger numbers.[2] Their preparations therefore included both acquiring weapons and studying how to reach a concentration of passengers.[2]

The investigation identified exposure to Islamic State online propaganda as an influence on Muhammad Muhamra.[7] A later investigative account described him as having encountered Islamic State ideology while studying in Jordan, before returning to Yatta in January 2016 and planning an attack with a friend.[8] The investigation nevertheless found no indication that the men had been formally recruited, instructed, or assisted by Islamic State.[7] The indictment account also connected the proposed attack to revenge for the July 2015 arson attack in Duma, which killed three members of the Dawabsheh family.[2]

To prepare for the attack, the cousins purchased suits, watches, leather bags, shoes, and glasses intended to make them look like businesspeople.[9] They acquired two improvised Carl Gustav-style firearms and practiced shooting.[9] Investigators said the weapons had been obtained through an intermediary in Yatta.[10] Their preparations also included knives as a fallback if the firearms jammed or ran out of ammunition, and rat poison intended to be applied to the blades.[2][9] The attack ultimately carried out at Sarona used firearms.[1]

On June 8, the cousins left Yatta and crossed into Israel near Meitar through a wide gap in the security barrier.[10] They were already armed when they crossed.[10] A Palestinian man working illegally in Israel helped transport them onward to Segev Shalom in the Negev, where they changed into suits before continuing their journey.[7][10] The route brought them first to the Beersheba railway station, consistent with their original plan to attack a train.[2]

A converted storage unit in Segev Shalom served as a base for their preparations.[10] Its owner, Abdelhadi Abu A’fash, was subsequently charged with housing and abetting infiltrators.[10] The indictment against him did not allege that he knew what the cousins intended to do, and he was not charged as an accessory to terrorism.[10] His case was thus separate from the prosecution of the men accused of planning and carrying out the shooting.[10]

At the Beersheba station, the cousins encountered security checks, including metal detectors, and abandoned their intended train attack.[2] They instead took a taxi to Tel Aviv, where they asked passersby for directions to restaurants or cafés and were directed toward Sarona Market.[2] The choice of Sarona as their target was made that day rather than during the preceding months of preparation.[9] Their eventual destination was a busy dining and entertainment area whose patrons included people at the restaurant and nearby venues.[1]

Zayn had originally intended to accompany the cousins but did not take part in the shooting.[7] The indictment account described him as having helped store weapons and other equipment, and said the cousins excluded him because he owed money and they believed his debts would prevent him from becoming a martyr.[9] Another investigative summary described his absence in more general terms as resulting from “technical reasons.”[7] His participation in planning and obtaining weapons later became central to proceedings over his criminal responsibility.[11]

Security-camera footage placed the two men outside the restaurant with briefcases at 9:04 p.m.[3] Wearing suits, they entered Max Brenner, sat down, and ordered food before beginning the attack.[3] They occupied an outdoor table near the entrance, from which they could fire toward people on the sidewalk and inside the restaurant and a neighboring establishment.[5] A contemporaneous account described them as ordering dessert before drawing their weapons.[12]

At 9:27 p.m., the men stood and opened fire.[3] They used improvised Carl Gustav-style submachine guns that they had carried in their bags.[5][12] The shooting struck a setting in which customers had been eating and socializing, and the four people killed were patrons of the restaurant or nearby venues.[1] A bartender described the burst of shooting as lasting approximately one minute.[12] The gunmen subsequently fled when their weapons stopped firing.[3]

One diner, Hagai Klein, ran toward a shooter carrying a chair and was shot twice, including in the chest.[13] He survived and was later discharged from hospital with a bullet fragment still lodged in his body.[13] Klein said that months before the shooting he had decided that, if faced with an attack, he would try to respond as an unarmed Israeli had done during another attack.[13] His attempt to confront an armed attacker became one of the individual experiences described in subsequent coverage of the shooting.[13]

The attackers split up while escaping.[3] Security guards exchanged fire with one of them on nearby HaArba’a Street, wounding him, while the other was caught nearby.[3] By approximately 9:40 p.m., police had reported the wounding of one assailant and the capture of the second.[3] Both gunmen were taken into custody alive, and the wounded attacker received hospital treatment.[7][5] Their capture allowed the subsequent investigation to reconstruct the preparations, intended train attack, entry route, and assistance they had received.[7]

The four people killed were Ido Ben Ari, Ilana Naveh, Michael Feige, and Mila Mishayev.[6] Later reporting gave a total of 16 people injured in the attack.[1] The victims included diners at Max Brenner and neighboring establishments, rather than people gathered at a single table or attending a common event.[1][6] Ben Ari was dining with his wife and children at a nearby restaurant when he was killed, and his wife was wounded.[6]

Ben Ari was 42 and lived in Ramat Gan.[6] Naveh, whose surname also appears as Nave, was 39 and lived in Tel Aviv; she left a husband and four daughters.[6] She fled when the shooting began, fell, lost consciousness, and was later pronounced dead at a Tel Aviv hospital.[4] The court subsequently held the defendants responsible for her death as well as the deaths of the other three victims.[4]

Feige, 58, was an academic who headed Ben-Gurion University’s Israel Studies program.[6] His research concerned Israeli society, and he received the 2010 Shapira Prize for a book examining ideological settlement through the Gush Emunim movement.[6] A commemorative description of his book, The Semiotics of Israeli Space and Time, records his murder at Sarona Market on June 8.[14] The volume was authored by Feige and edited by David Ohana.[14]

Mishayev was also among the four victims consistently identified in reporting on the attack and the later prosecution.[4][6] The wounded included people whose injuries required prolonged treatment, among them Klein, who survived gunshots sustained while confronting a shooter.[13] The eventual sentencing order separately provided compensation for victims’ families, seriously wounded survivors, and people whom the defendants had attempted to murder.[4] Those categories reflected different consequences of the attack rather than a single undifferentiated casualty count.[4]

Israeli security forces searched the attackers’ homes in Yatta, questioned family members, and detained suspects after the shooting.[5] Authorities also froze 204 entry permits held by members of the attackers’ families.[15] Broader measures included freezing 83,000 permits that would have allowed West Bank Palestinians to visit relatives in Israel during Ramadan.[15] Authorities suspended Ramadan-related arrangements for Gaza residents as well, including measures concerning prayer visits to the Temple Mount.[15]

In August 2016, Israeli forces demolished the homes of the two gunmen in the Hebron-area communities of Khirbet Raqa’ and Yatta.[9] The operation involved the Israel Defense Forces, Border Police, and Civil Administration, using bulldozers and explosives.[9] These demolitions followed the earlier searches and arrests and took place while the criminal proceedings over the shooting were continuing.[9][16]

The Palestinian Authority chairman’s office issued a statement on the afternoon after the attack opposing attacks on civilians on both sides, without mentioning those killed or wounded at Sarona.[5] Hamas figures and affiliated channels praised the shooting, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine welcomed it.[5] Celebrations and the distribution of candy were reported in several locations.[5] Hamas spokesman Husam Badran called the attack “the first sign of Ramadan and the month’s first surprise for Israel.”[5]

Members of the United Nations Security Council condemned the attack “in the strongest terms,” expressed condolences to the victims’ families and the Government of Israel, and called for those responsible to be brought to justice.[17] This was the Council’s first official condemnation of a Palestinian terrorist attack against Israelis since the beginning of the then-current wave of violence.[17] The statement combined condemnation of the shooting with a demand for accountability for its perpetrators.[17]

A separate criminal investigation concerned retaliatory vandalism in the Arab village of Yafia.[16] In July, the Israel Security Agency arrested three Jewish minors suspected of burning cars and spray-painting there during the previous month.[16] Two suspects admitted to police that the vandalism was retaliation for the Sarona attack.[16] Two minors were indicted for arson, malicious damage motivated by nationalism, and obstruction of justice; the third was indicted for failing to prevent a crime.[16] Their case remained ongoing at the end of 2016.[16]

The two gunmen were indicted for murder in Tel Aviv District Court on July 4, 2016.[16] The indictment charged them with four murders and 41 attempted murders.[2] Their friend Zayn was also charged over his role in obtaining weapons and preparing the attack.[2] At the end of 2016, the cases against the three men were still ongoing.[16]

The prosecution’s account described a sequence beginning with research into railway targets and continuing through weapons purchases, shooting practice, the acquisition of clothing and accessories, and the journey into Israel.[2][9] It also described the knives intended as backup weapons and the rat poison bought for use on their blades.[2][9] The move from the intended train attack to a restaurant shooting followed the security checks at Beersheba station, rather than an earlier decision to select Sarona as the target.[2]

In October 2017, the Tel Aviv District Court convicted the three defendants of four murders.[11] The court held them responsible for Nave’s death even though she had collapsed while fleeing and died later in hospital.[11] The shooters were also convicted of attempted murders and conspiracy, while Zayn’s responsibility arose from his participation in the preparations rather than his presence at the scene.[11][4] His murder convictions were reached over a dissent concerning whether a participant who had not joined the shooting should bear that liability.[11]

In November 2017, each of the three men received four life sentences, one for each person killed, plus another 60 years for attempted murders.[4] The court described the murders as committed under circumstances of exceptional severity.[4] It ordered each defendant to pay 258,000 shekels to each victim’s family, 200,000 shekels to each of four seriously wounded people, and 20,000 shekels for each attempted murder.[4] The sentencing decision retained the disagreement concerning Zayn’s responsibility.[4]

The prosecution of Abu A’fash, the owner of the Segev Shalom storage unit, involved a narrower allegation than the cases against the three principal defendants.[10] Although prosecutors described his property as a place used to prepare for the attack, they did not allege that he knew the gunmen’s intentions.[10] His charges concerned housing and abetting infiltrators, not knowingly assisting the terrorist shooting.[10] The distinction separated assistance with unlawful entry and accommodation from the alleged advance knowledge underlying the main terrorism prosecution.[10]

The Sarona restaurant area resumed full operation the morning after the shooting, according to the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.[18] The center also reported that the area attracted more customers than usual in the following days and interpreted this as a collective return to routine despite the suffering of individuals.[18] Its discussion used Sarona as an example of how ordinary commercial and social activity could resume quickly after a terrorist attack.[18]

In a separate discussion of resilience, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs highlighted Klein’s response to the gunmen.[19] It described him throwing a stool, briefly interrupting the attack and causing one attacker to drop his weapon.[19] Subsequent reporting on Klein’s recovery recorded both the seriousness of his injuries and his earlier determination to intervene if he encountered an attack.[13] His experience connected the public account of resistance at Sarona with the lasting physical consequences for a survivor.[13]

Feige’s death also entered the commemoration of his academic work.[14] The description accompanying The Semiotics of Israeli Space and Time explicitly linked the book with his murder at Sarona Market.[14] Alongside accounts of reopening restaurants and individual survival, this commemoration preserved the loss of a scholar whose research examined Israeli society, space, and ideology.[6][14] The attack’s subsequent record thus included criminal judgments, survivors’ experiences, and remembrance of the four people killed.[4][14]

Reported injury totals varied. An early account gave seven wounded, while Ynet later reported 16.[5][1] Other summaries reported five or 17.[20][21] A later investigative summary stated that 41 people were wounded, while the indictment separately charged 41 attempted murders; the charge count should not be treated as an established number of physical injuries.[8][2] All these accounts agreed that four people were killed.[1][20]

The investigation distinguished Islamic State inspiration from organizational direction: exposure to online propaganda was identified, but no formal recruitment, instruction, or assistance by Islamic State was established in its account.[7] Local Hamas representatives claimed the attackers were members, while Hamas figures praised the attack; neither amounted to an official Hamas claim of responsibility in the early account.[5] These distinctions separate ideological influence, claimed affiliation, and operational command.[7][5]

The principal legal disagreement concerned Zayn’s murder convictions.[11] A dissenting judge opposed those convictions because he had not participated in the shooting, and his lawyer argued that his conviction should have been limited to assistance.[11] The majority nevertheless convicted him of the murders, and he received the same four life terms and additional 60 years as the gunmen.[4][11]