Beersheba bank shooting

On May 20, 2013, a mass shooting occurred at a Bank Hapoalim branch in the Neve Ze'ev neighborhood of Beersheba, Israel. The perpetrator, Itamar Alon, a 39-year-old Beersheba resident, entered the bank, sat briefly among customers waiting for service, then stood and opened fire. He killed the branch manager, Avner Cohen, and deputy manager Meir Zeitun, along with two customers, Idan Sabri and Anat Even-Haim. Eyewitnesses reported that Alon shot the two bank employees multiple times to ensure they were dead. Five other people were wounded in the attack.

Alon had visited the same branch earlier that day to request a debt settlement and was refused; he returned around 1:00 p.m. armed with a .45-caliber Glock 21 semiautomatic pistol. After the shooting, he took a bank employee, Miri Cohen, hostage and barricaded himself with her in a bathroom. Police arrived within roughly three minutes of the shooting's start. During the response, one officer fired at a flowerpot as a deterrent while officers searched the premises, and one of the wounded victims was briefly and mistakenly handcuffed after being confused for the shooter. Once it was established that Alon was in the bathroom with a hostage, an officer fired a single shot into the bathroom. Police then negotiated with Alon until he shot himself. He was transported to Soroka Medical Center, where he died. Police officials stated that no security guard had been present at the bank at the time of the attack.

Background reporting on Alon describes a history of military and security-related work: he completed mandatory IDF service in the Combat Engineering Corps, rising to officer rank, and later served in the Israel Border Police, including joint patrols with Palestinian police in the Tulkarm area. He subsequently worked as a security guard for educational institutions and the Beersheba municipality and served as a reserve platoon commander. In 2002, during a shooting attack by two Palestinian militants that killed two Israeli soldiers, Alon killed one of the militants with his pistol and was later awarded a medal by then-Beersheba mayor Yaakov Turner. That same year he was dismissed from municipal employment at the end of a trial period due to poor relations with co-workers, and was reassigned from platoon command to a rearguard battalion role in the IDF Home Front Command over concerns about aggressive behavior and judgment. In 2011, police sought to revoke his private gun license following a dispute with neighbors and suspicions of violence against his parents; a court allowed him to retain the license. In May 2013, shortly before the shooting, his credit card was cancelled after he accumulated debt of approximately NIS 6,000, and an ATM had swallowed the card.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the shooting as "a terrible tragedy" and noted that mass shootings are an uncommon phenomenon in Israel.