The Café Apropo bombing was a Palestinian suicide bombing which occurred on 21 March 1997 in a coffee shop in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

. Three women were killed in the attack and 48 were injured.

The attack

The attack occurred on 21 March 1997, on the eve of the

Purim Purim (; , ) is a Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jews, Jewish people from Genocide, annihilation at the hands of an official of the Achaemenid Empire named Haman, as it is recounted in the Book of Esther (u ...

holiday, at around 13:40, when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated an explosive device which was concealed in a handbag in the entrance to the coffee shop "Apropo" in Tel Aviv. The force of the explosion killed three young women in their early 30s, one of them was three months pregnant.

Assailant

The assailant has been identified as Musa Abd al-Qadir Ghanimat from the

West Bank The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...

village of Surif. He was member of a

Hamas The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...

cell run by a relative, Ibrahim Ghanimat, who was finally captured in 2005. The cell, sometimes called the "Surif squad", is also responsible for several other attacks against Israeli targets. It was believed at least at some point during the investigations that the assailant had no intention to die as a suicide bomber, but that the timing device misfired.

Aftermath

Following the attack, the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate found for the first time clear evidence which proved that the Palestinian leader

Yasser Arafat Yasser Arafat (4 or 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), also popularly known by his Kunya (Arabic), kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. He was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004, Presid ...

was encouraging and initiating militant attacks on Israeli civilians within Israel in order to advance the negotiations with Israel. A monument has been placed near the site of the attack which was created by the artist Eliezer Weishoff. The monument depicts three roses which were cut off. The attack is remembered among the Israeli public, in part, due to the picture taken of a six-month-old infant girl in a clown costume who survived the attack because she was saved by her mother, who protected her with her body from the force of the blast. In January 2015, the child from the photograph, since identified as Shani Winter, joined the

Israeli Defense Forces Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli (b ...

, accompanied by the same traffic policewoman who carried her in the photo.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cafe Apropo bombing Suicide bombings in 1997 1997 murders in Israel Hamas suicide bombings Suicide bombings in Tel Aviv 1990s in Tel Aviv Islamic terrorist incidents in 1997 Building bombings in Tel Aviv Terrorist incidents in Israel in 1997 Female murder victims Tel Aviv in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict Restaurant bombings in Israel 20th-century mass murder in Israel Attacks on coffeehouses and cafés in Asia Mass murder in 1997 March 1997 in Asia