On March 6, 2008, Ala Hussein Abu Dheim, a resident of the village of Jabel Mukaber murdered eight students at Merkaz HaRav rabbinical college in Jerusalem. Abu Dheim was 26 at the time, and two years prior to the murder he started getting closer to Islam. As a resident of the eastern part of Jerusalem, he carried a blue identification card (an ID card reserved for Israeli citizens and permanent residents) and was even employed for a while as a passenger driver in Jerusalem. Four months later, in July 2008, East Jerusalem Palestinians carried out two vehicular terror attacks in the city center on Jaffa and King David streets.
The government of Ehud Olmert and his Kadima party was on its way out. Olmert, who was trying with all his might not to get bogged down by the various criminal cases in which he was embroiled, invested much effort at the time in achieving a diplomatic breakthrough with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. As expected, the terror attacks generated political unrest and Israel reacted with arrests and the demolition of the terrorists’ homes. The issue of disengagement from the city's border neighborhoods (of which Jabel Mukaber was one) emerged then for the first time on the political agenda, with a clear and decisive call for it by a senior cabinet member.