IT WOULD have taken Ala Abu Dhaim just 20 minutes to drive from his family's villa in Jabal al-Mukaber in East Jerusalem to the Mercaz Harav religious seminary.
Leaving the village behind, the 25-year-old would have driven past Tolerance Park, before heading towards West Jerusalem and the ultra-orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Kiryat Moshe.
Just before 8.30pm on Thursday, Abu Dhaim burst into the ground-f
loor library of one of Jerusalem's best-known yeshivas, where dozens of young men were studying.
The Palestinian sprayed the room with automatic gunfire and then fired with a pistol before an off-duty Israeli soldier, shot him dead. Eight religious students were killed and at least nine were wounded.
Some were sitting at tables, others were standing at the shelves when the firing began.
Witnesses talked of a "bloodbath" as Dhaim randomly fired dozens of bullets. Yesterday there were still books riddled with bullet holes lying on the ground with nearby walls scarred with pockmarks.
Jerusalem remained on high alert yesterday as Israeli security services sought to find out whether Abu Dhaim, who had an Israeli identity card, was working alone or had the help of a Palestinian militant group.
While Hamas welcomed the shooting, there has been no clear statement of responsibility issued by either the Islamist movement or Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. One Arab-Israeli group, called the Galilee Freedom Brigade, had claimed responsibility on Thursday night but Israeli authorities have so far refused to comment on the claim's legitimacy.
Abu Dhaim's choice of target was certainly not random, with Mercaz Harav yeshiva being the backbone of the Israeli settler movement and whose alumni includes many religious Zionist leaders.
Perched high on a hilltop, the Abu Dhaim family home provides sweeping views of East Jerusalem, including the eight-metre-high concrete barrier that now separates the city from the West Bank.
The gunman's family told Scotland on Sunday that Israeli police were still holding two of Abu Dhaim's brothers for questioning along with a cousin and a close friend.
Mourning tents had been erected on the villa's terraces where inside many friends, neighbours along with family members expressed shock at how "a sweet, normal guy", as one friend put it, could carry out such an act.
Posters of Abu Dhaim superimposed on an image of the Al-Aqsa mosque adorn the inside of the tents.
"He wasn't crazy, he was just one of us, a normal young guy who said he was heading out and said goodbye to his family on Thursday night," 'Mohammed', a cousin of Abu Dhaim's said.
"The first thing they heard was when they started getting calls from the media close to midnight on Thursday, saying their son was the gunman, then the Israeli police turned up and took away nine members of the family, even his father."
Abu Dhaim was planning to get married in August to 21-year-old Al-Quds university graduate, Reem. He worked as a bus driver for an East Jerusalem company, and would also occasionally work as a taxi driver to earn extra money.
"He was saving money for the wedding and to build a house. This wasn't a guy who didn't have a future," Mohammed said.
His family denied Abu Dhaim was a member of a militant group but his sister, Iman Abu Dhaim, told reporters that he had been transfixed by the bloodshed in Gaza the previous week which had caused the deaths of 126 Palestinians.
One neighbour, Atta Abdo, a 60-year-old taxi driver, said: "It's not surprising such violence in Gaza upset Ala. The Palestinian people are not tourists. This is our land and we will defend our right to live here."
Despite the construction of the controversial security barrier, there are still about 200,000 Palestinians on the Israeli side of the barrier in Jerusalem. They have Israeli ID cards, thus allowing them freedom of movement within Israel. It is this population that is causing the greatest concern for Israeli security, and Thursday's shooting only proved its worst fears.
Professor Ariel Merari, a terrorism expert at Tel Aviv University, said: "It is a nightmare for security services and one cannot rely on physical barriers or roadblocks – because even in this case, had there been one, the gunman would have easily got through with his Israeli ID card.
"So instead you have to rely on intelligence information."
Yet despite fears that Thursday's shooting may derail the fragile US-backed peace talks, both Israelis and Palestinians have reaffirmed their commitment to ongoing negotiations.
Yesterday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said peace efforts with Israel must move forward, despite the recent bloody spate of violence.
He also stressed his support for Egypt's efforts to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
"Despite all the attacks we insist on peace. There is no other path," Abbas said.
Both sides hope to reach a final agreement by the end of the year.
However, the Egyptian-backed truce efforts remain more sketchy, especially if it turns out Hamas was behind the seminary shooting.
The full article contains 857 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
