Maxim Restaurant Suicide Bombing

Maxim had operated for about 40 years at Haifa’s southern entrance before the bombing, under joint Jewish-Arab ownership.[4] The popular restaurant served a regular Saturday clientele and stood near the beachfront.[4][3] Its ownership included Jewish and Christian Arab partners, and it was widely described as a symbol of coexistence.[1][4]

The business had roots in the 1960s, when George Matar’s grandfather established it in Haifa’s southern approaches.[5] Matar recalled that his family later operated it with three other partner families—one Jewish and two Arab.[5] The attack therefore struck not only a crowded dining establishment but a business whose history and daily operation embodied cooperation between Jewish and Arab residents.[1][5]

The bombing occurred during the Second Intifada, which had begun in 2000.[1] During 2003, two dozen suicide bombings struck Israel, with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, and other Palestinian organizations participating in the planning and execution of attacks during that period.[1] The Maxim bombing was one of the deadliest suicide bombings of the year.[6]

Palestinian terrorist organizations used women both as suicide attackers and as assistants during this period, partly on the assumption that women would attract less suspicion at checkpoints and undergo less intensive searches.[7] The Maxim attack was the sixth female suicide bombing of the Second Intifada and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s first use of a woman as a suicide attacker according to the 2003 terrorism review.[1][7] The organization began using female suicide bombers in 2003.[6]

Hanadi Jaradat was a Palestinian trainee lawyer from Jenin.[8] The Israeli government identified her full name as Hanadi Taysir ‘Abd al-Malik Jaradat.[9] Biographical statements issued by Palestinian Islamic Jihad placed her birth in 1975 in Silat al-Hartiya, in the Jenin district, and said she graduated from law school in Jordan in 1999 before working in a Jenin law office.[8] The group also portrayed her as religious.[8]

Her brother Fadi Jaradat and a cousin, Salah Jaradat, had been killed in June 2003 during an Israeli operation to arrest them.[8] Israeli accounts identified the two men as Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives who were planning an attack inside Israel.[8] Their deaths subsequently featured in explanations offered for the bombing, while Islamic Jihad also invoked Israeli actions in the weeks preceding the attack.[8][1]

At about 2:15 p.m. on Saturday, October 4, 2003, Jaradat entered Maxim carrying explosives and detonated them in the middle of the restaurant.[3] The restaurant was busy with lunchtime diners, including customers returning from the beach and people who regularly visited on Saturdays.[3][10] The explosion devastated the establishment.[3][10]

The explosive device was described as an explosive belt.[1] An Israeli government account put its weight at four kilograms and said it contained ball bearings and shrapnel.[9] The explosion struck diners and staff, killing members of several families and four Arab citizens, including the restaurant’s security guard.[11][12]

Shortly before the bombing, co-owner George Matar telephoned his wife and told her the restaurant was full and that he expected a successful, happy day.[4] Their conversation was cut off by the explosion.[4] Matar was seriously wounded by shrapnel and underwent surgery at Rambam Hospital.[4] He later died of his injuries on October 15.[11]

A later family recollection described how other relatives had narrowly avoided being present.[5] A younger George Matar recalled that his family had planned to visit the restaurant, but his father told his mother by telephone that it was full, and they went to a relative’s home instead.[5] His father had left the restaurant to run errands about 15 minutes before the explosion.[5] Matar also recalled that his grandfather survived inside the restaurant and that three employees were killed while shielding him from the blast.[5]

The military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Quds Brigades, claimed responsibility about four hours after the bombing.[10] The group presented the attack as retaliation for Israeli actions, including construction of the separation barrier, and invoked the deaths of people it identified as Jaradat’s fiancé and brother.[10] It also portrayed the bombing as a response to the killing of senior officials in preceding weeks and as a demonstration of weaknesses in Israeli security.[1]

Investigations also addressed how Jaradat reached Haifa and the assistance she received.[7][9] Jamal Mahajaneh, an Israeli Arab from Umm al-Fahm, admitted transporting her.[7] An Israeli government account described her journey as beginning in Barta’a and recorded her stated purpose as arranging hospitalization for her father in Haifa.[9] Immediate police inquiries also examined her route into Israel and the security arrangements at the restaurant entrance.[10]

The attack killed 21 people, including four Arab citizens, and left dozens injured.[1][11] Contemporary reporting described roughly 60 injured, around ten of them in serious condition.[10] A U.S. citizen was among those injured.[13] The fatalities included four children, members of two families who had gathered for meals, and restaurant staff going about their work.[1][11]

The Almog and Zer-Aviv families each lost five members, accounting together for ten of the people killed.[11] Their losses extended across three generations, from grandparents to grandchildren.[2] The two families’ presence at the restaurant became a central part of subsequent remembrance of the attack.[3]

The Almog victims were Ze’ev Almog, 71; his wife Ruth, 70; their son Moshe, 43; and their grandsons Tomer Almog, nine, and Assaf Staier, 11.[11] The family was from Haifa.[11] An account of their lunch placed Jaradat’s detonation near the family group and described surviving relatives, including Galit and Orly, as wounded in the explosion.[2]

The Zer-Aviv victims were Bruria, 59; her son Bezalel, 30; his wife Keren, 29; and their children Liran, four, and Noya, one.[11] They were from Kibbutz Yagur.[11] The deaths eliminated members of three generations of that family in a single attack.[11][3]

Four Arab citizens were among those killed.[12] They were Hana Francis, Sharbal Matar, Osama Najar, and security guard Mutanus Karkabi.[11][12] Their deaths formed part of the attack’s impact on both Jewish and Arab residents of Haifa and on the restaurant’s shared working community.[1][4]

Other victims named in immediate reporting included Mark and Naomi Biano, Nir Regev, Zvi Behat, and Irena Sofrin.[12] Lydia Zilberstein and George Matar subsequently died of their wounds.[11] Matar’s death was recorded on October 15, following his initial hospitalization and surgery.[11][4]

Ten-year-old Oren Almog survived with severe injuries and was blinded.[14] The bombing killed his father Moshe, his brother Tomer, his grandparents, and a cousin.[14] His mother, sister, and aunt were also injured.[14]

Almog later served in the Israel Defense Forces despite his blindness.[14] In 2017, he addressed the United Nations Security Council, recalling the deaths of five family members and the injuries suffered by surviving relatives.[14] His address called for international action against payments to people convicted of terrorist attacks.[14]

On the night of October 4–5, Israel carried out an airstrike in Syria in response to the Haifa bombing.[15] Israel described the target outside Damascus as a Palestinian terrorist training camp.[15] The strike was also recorded in a U.S. chronology of events as taking place the day after the restaurant attack.[16] Hezbollah condemned the operation and warned against further Israeli attacks on Syria.[15]

Israel held Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority responsible for the bombing.[1] The Israeli army demolished Jaradat’s home and struck the Syrian camp, which was described in the account of the response as associated with Islamic Jihad and Hamas.[1] These measures followed the attack claimed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.[1]

Military court proceedings subsequently addressed the roles of people involved in sending Jaradat to carry out the bombing.[17] In 2004, Amjad Abidi, identified as a leader of Islamic Jihad’s northern faction in Jenin, and Sami Jaridat received cumulative life sentences for their involvement.[17] Abidi was sentenced to 23 life terms plus 50 years, and Jaridat to 21 life terms plus 50 years.[17]

The court ordered that both men serve their sentences for the remainder of their lives.[17] Abidi was also found guilty of involvement in other attacks, so his sentence reflected offenses beyond the Maxim bombing alone.[17] Jaridat’s involvement in the bombing was again mentioned in January 2025 reporting about prisoners slated for release.[18]

The restaurant was rebuilt and reopened after the attack.[1] Bereaved families nevertheless sought a permanent public memorial outside the establishment.[19] Two years after the bombing, relatives of the 21 victims demonstrated at Maxim to demand that such a memorial be established there.[19]

The City of Haifa inaugurated a memorial in April 2007.[20] The ceremony brought together survivors, victims’ families, the mayor, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, and Muslim, Christian, and Jewish religious leaders.[20] Families laid wreaths in memory of those killed.[20] Dichter acknowledged that he had been part of the system responsible for preventing the attack and that the system had failed to foil it.[20]

At the tenth-anniversary commemoration in 2013, several dozen relatives gathered beside the memorial near the restaurant.[3] Remembrance focused in part on the Almog and Zer-Aviv families, each of which had lost five members across three generations.[3] The memorial provided a place for survivors and bereaved relatives to mark the attack beside the establishment where it occurred.[3][20]

The restaurant’s rebuilding and reopening preserved a business that had been associated with coexistence before the bombing.[1] Its Jewish and Arab ownership, the deaths of Arab citizens alongside Jewish diners, and the participation of leaders from three religious communities in the memorial’s inauguration remained defining elements of its public history.[1][12][20]

Survivors also carried the history of the bombing into military service and international advocacy.[14] Almog’s IDF service followed the injuries that had left him blind, and his later Security Council address brought his family’s losses before an international audience.[14] In that appearance, he connected remembrance of the attack with opposition to payments made to people convicted of terrorist attacks.[14]

A different form of commemoration took place in Jenin in October 2012, when four members of an Arab Lawyers Union delegation visited in connection with the bombing’s anniversary.[21] A ceremony was held at Jaradat’s family home on October 13, and the delegation presented her family with a framed plaque.[21] The inscription identified her as a lawyer and suicide bomber and commemorated the day she carried out the attack.[21]

The bombing also became a reference point in accounts of Palestinian terrorist organizations’ use of female attackers.[6][7] Its identification in the 2003 terrorism review as Islamic Jihad’s first suicide attack carried out by a woman placed it within a change in the organization’s operational methods during 2003.[7] The attack combined that development with a large civilian death toll at a restaurant whose shared ownership had made it a local symbol of Jewish-Arab cooperation.[1][6]

Published casualty totals vary, although later victim lists and anniversary accounts commonly give 21 deaths.[11][3] Official U.S. accounts recorded 19 killed and at least 55 wounded, or 20 killed and 60 injured.[16][13] A separate State Department overview reported 21 killed and at least 50 wounded.[6] Other accounts gave 22 deaths.[18] Injury totals elsewhere ranged from 48 to about 60.[9][1] Immediate reporting used a developing death toll, and records document later deaths from injuries; the available accounts do not resolve every numerical difference.[10][11]

Explanations of Jaradat’s motive and recruitment also differ.[8][9] Revenge accounts variously identify the men whose deaths preceded the bombing as her brother and fiancé or her brother and cousin, while a contemporary assessment found no established explanation of how she became involved and concluded that her real motive remained unknown.[8][9] A later family interview included an account that she had originally intended to attack Rambam Hospital, but this was not an independently established explanation of her target selection.[5]

Immediate assessments of her route and restaurant security were preliminary: police were examining a possible crossing near Baka al-Sharqiya, and the police commissioner cautioned against early conclusions.[10] Descriptions of the subsequent Syrian airstrike also differed, with Israel identifying a terrorist training camp and Palestinian accounts describing an abandoned camp associated with Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Front–General Command.[15]