By Kevin Peraino
 
In the first three years after I moved to Jerusalem, there were virtually no high-profile attacks in the city. When I arrived, in January 2005, Yasir Arafat had just died, and the second intifada seemed to be coming to a close. Suicide bombers still managed to strike from time to time in Tel Aviv or Israel's south. Yet over the next few years, Israelis were increasingly puzzled about the militants' inability (or unwillingness) to strike in Jerusalem, as attackers did frequently during the height of the intifada. Conventional wisdom held that the controversial wall Israel was building around--and through--the city was having at least some effect at stopping would-be bombers from crossing into Israel from the West Bank.
 
Something seems to have changed this year. Three times already in 2008, attackers have gone on rampages in the heart of the city. In March a Palestinian from East Jerusalem opened fire at a yeshiva at the entrance to town, killing eight students. Earlier this month another East Jerusalemite began attacking drivers on a busy West Jerusalem thoroughfare with the bulldozer he was driving, killing three Israelis. Then today, in an apparent copycat attack, a third Palestinian from East Jerusalem used a backhoe to flip and smash cars on one of the city's busiest intersections. Nobody was killed except the attacker, who was quickly shot dead by bystanders, and there are no signs at this stage that the incidents are anything other than random. Still, the cumulative effect of the bizarre wave of violence in the city center has had an unnerving effect on city residents--not to mention the campaign staff of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, who was due to check into a hotel just up the road just a few hours later.
 
I learned of the attack today before the news hit the wires, the same way as the other two: the wail of dozens of emergency sirens converged in the air over Jerusalem from all over the city. I walked down to the scene, which is just around the corner from my apartment. The attacker lay dead on the sidewalk, stripped to the waist, his torso riddled with bullet holes. The windshield of his bulldozer was pocked with the white coronas of several gunshots. Photographers clambered up a tall olive tree trying to get a better view. One car lay upside down, resting on its hood, windows smashed. Another small white car was crumpled like a tin can. A crowd of right-wing settlers from Hebron began to chant hawkish slogans over the din of the sirens. 
 
In nearby Liberty Bell Park, I bumped into a young Israeli paramedic named Yerach Tucker, who I first met at the scene of the yeshiva shooting in March. "It's the very, very, very center of the city," he said, shaking his head. The first responder had told me back in March that, despite the attacks, he favored direct negotiations with Hamas. This time he conceded that talks with the Islamists are somewhat beside the point in these cases, when the attackers are coming from East Jerusalem rather than Gaza or the West Bank. "I think it's just random, but it's very frightening," he told me. "They're coming from Jerusalem. You can't trust anyone now."