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Israel Mourns Eight Slain Students
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"Security measures can never bring an end to the conflict," he said. "The only thing that will is a political solution that takes into account the rights and interests of both sides."
A day after the attack, security was tight across Jerusalem, with police bearing automatic weapons standing on many street corners and a surveillance blimp hovering overhead. Israel also imposed a strict curfew in the West Bank and restricted access to Muslims wishing to pray at al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City, Islam's third-holiest site.
At the home of Ala Abu Dheim, the 25-year-old man who walked into the yeshiva Thursday night with an AK-47 assault rifle hidden in a box, family members said that nine relatives had been taken into custody for questioning overnight.
Abu Dheim was a bus driver who worked with Jews and spoke Hebrew, family members said Friday. With his green eyes and fair skin, he mixed relatively easily in Israeli society. He was engaged to be married this summer, but relatives said he had become despondent over a recent Israeli offensive in Gaza that killed more than 120 Palestinians, many of them civilians.
"The situation has changed because of what happened in Gaza," said a relative who identified himself as Abu Abdullah. "Whether an Arab is in Gaza or Jerusalem, it is the same attitude."
Israel says its military operations in Gaza are aimed at stopping Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel.
Mourners at the yeshiva memorial service Friday were instructed not to indulge any desire for retribution.
"Revenge is from on high," said Yaakov Shapira, the yeshiva's head rabbi.
Weeping openly, Shapira called for prayers for the relatives of the victims, who ranged in age from 15 to 26. "Today, we are all in need of mercy, the entire country," Shapira said. "Pray for all of us, and for the parents and the brothers and sisters and all the friends who are in such pain."
The service was attended by a diverse array of Israelis -- ultra-Orthodox men in tall black hats, secular Jews in jeans and soldiers in uniform. Students gazed out from the school's windows and balconies onto the massive crowd below.
Rabbi Yerachmiel Weiss, a leader of the yeshiva, paid tribute to the dead students, one by one, saying he wanted to "explain to you, Creator of the World, who you took."
"Each one loved to sit in the library here," he said, "and now you have taken them to your library on high."
Special correspondent Hillary Zaken contributed to this report.
