TEL AVIV — Israel’s new defense minister, the avowed hard-liner Avigdor Lieberman, drank a cappuccino Thursday at the popular restaurant where two Palestinian gunmen in black suits and ties had killed four Israeli civilians the night before.
Surrounded by armed guards and police officers, Lieberman said he had come “first and foremost to salute the people of Tel Aviv,’’ who, he said, “know how to return to life and prove that life is stronger than terror.’’
Minutes earlier, Shelly Yacimovich of the center-left Labor Party bicycled up and said she had moved all the day’s meetings to Sarona, the restaurant and shopping complex where the attack occurred. “It was important for me to come here,’’ she said. “We cannot let the terrorists win and upend our lives.’’
Rabbi Joseph Gerlitzky and colleagues from the central Tel Aviv branch of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement erected a table outside the scene of the shootings — Max Brenner, a chocolate bar and cafe, and Benedict, an adjacent all-day breakfast joint. They encouraged mostly secular passers-by to pray for the dead. Gerlitzky urged a tougher policy against Israel’s enemies to “put fear in their hearts.’’
Shocked waiters and cooks in striped pants hugged one another while diners ate on the Max Brenner patio. On a patch of lawn opposite, dozens of youths from a pre-army leadership course sat in a circle and sang peace songs.
In the aftermath of the killings, Israelis found a rare moment of solidarity and comfort in their determination to show resolve and demonstrate a swift return to routine.
After an eight-month wave of Palestinian attacks that have killed about 30 Israelis and two American visitors — and that had seemed to be ebbing — the killings represent a first test for Lieberman as defense minister. But despite years of tough rhetoric about how he would counter terrorism, he seemed to have recognized the limits of power.
Even after dozens of stabbings, car rammings, and shooting attacks in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and cities around Israel, the assault Wednesday evening was particularly brazen. It took place in the shadow of Israel’s military and Defense Ministry headquarters, across the road from Sarona.
The Israeli military authorities responded Thursday by temporarily suspending 83,000 special travel permits granted to West Bank Palestinians for family visits to Israel during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. They also suspended permits for Palestinians from Gaza to travel to Jerusalem for prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
After a meeting of the security Cabinet at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office toughened the response, saying the Ramadan permits had been canceled.
Authorities said they had revoked 204 work permits held by relatives of the gunmen, who are cousins. The military sent two battalions of soldiers to bolster its forces in the West Bank, and said the Palestinian town where the gunmen lived, Yatta, in the southern West Bank, had been sealed off. An Israeli agency that coordinates civilian affairs with the Palestinians said that only humanitarian and medical cases could enter and leave Yatta.
The Palestinians and human rights groups have denounced measures such as these, and the demolition of the family homes of assailants, another frequent Israeli tactic, as collective punishment that only encourages more violence.
Lieberman has, in the past, demanded much harsher measures, including the death penalty, for Palestinians convicted of terrorism.
Many analysts had predicted that Lieberman, a former foreign minister and leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, would be more pragmatic as defense minister. There was no mention of the death penalty after the Cabinet meeting.
Instead, in addition to the cancellation of permits, it said that work would soon begin on closing gaps in the southern part of Israel’s West Bank barrier that it constructed with the stated purpose of preventing the entry of Palestinian assailants.
Ahmad Mussa Mahmara, the father of one of the gunmen, who were equipped with crude rifles, told the Associated Press that he was surprised by his son’s act.
“We didn’t expect this,’’ Mahmara was quoted as saying. “My son is young and has been in Jordan for the past four years, and just came here for the past five months. He does not have any political affiliation.’’
The four victims were identified as Ido Ben Ari, 42, whose wife was wounded in the assault; Ilana Naveh, 39, a mother of four daughters; Michael Feige, 58, a sociologist and anthropologist at Ben-Gurion University; and Mila Mishayev, a woman in her early 30s who friends said had been engaged to be married.
Four people remained hospitalized in a Tel Aviv hospital with moderate injuries. One of the gunmen was being treated in the same hospital for gunshot wounds from a security guard and the other was in custody, according to police.
Details emerged Thursday of a bungled response to the attack that left many Israelis incredulous. One gunman, who had discarded his weapon, fled to a nearby residential building, asked an off-duty police officer for water, and was taken into the officer’s apartment for refuge, according to police.
Only after the officer went down to the street to help with the pursuit of the assailants did he realize that the man he had left upstairs with his wife and her mother was dressed in the same attire as the gunman who had been wounded. He returned to his apartment with backup and overpowered the fugitive.
