Café on the front line
Israeli bar and restaurant owners were beginning to enjoy a return of customers after a lull in violence when an entirely unexpected new threat emerged last week.
Three young Palestinians from east Jerusalem were arrested on suspicion of planning to poison customers at the Rimon Café with a concoction described on the Web site of the militant Hamas movement.
Under interrogation the three, one of whom was an assistant chef at the restaurant, confessed that they had planned to slip a lethal poison, which has no taste, colour or odour, into customers' food and drink, Israeli police said.
Once ingested, the concoction takes effect 15 hours later, killing the victim with symptoms similar to a heart attack.
"It was really shocking that someone actually working with us would try to do such a thing," said restaurant owner Ronen Rimon.
"When you work in central Jerusalem, you know the reality that you're walking into and it's not easy," he said, referring to the spate of suicide bombings and shootings that have taken place in the city centre over the past year, at least five of which have occurred within 50 yards of his restaurant. "But we never thought anything like this would happen."
The restaurant is on the corner of Jerusalem's busy central pedestrianised area and has been serving Jerusalemites for nearly 50 years, with patrons ranging from locals and tourists to senior government ministers.
With 400 seats, the restaurant employs 80 staff, about 10% of whom are Palestinian workers from the largely Arab east side of the city. Many have been working there for more than six years; others, like the assistant chef, have been there for only three.
Support from customers
Despite the publicity given to the incident - it was splashed across the front pages of Israel's four major dailies - the reaction from customers has been remarkable, Rimon said, with many coming in to express their support.
A small number, however, have rung up demanding that the restaurant immediately dismiss its remaining Arab workers, a step which Rimon is adamant he will not take.
Since the outbreak of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising, nearly two years ago, relations between Jews and Arabs in the Holy City have become increasingly strained under pressure from the growing number of Palestinian attacks.
And this failed poisoning attempt has dealt a further blow to Arab-Jewish coexistence - in Jerusalem particularly, where there is virtually no restaurant, café or bar which does not employ Palestinian workers.
"Without their work, you might as well shut down this city," restaurant owner Moshe Nuriel told Israeli daily Ha'aretz. "They not only cook for the Jews, they also clean the city and deliver the cooking gas, and even build our houses. If they want to hurt us, they have no lack of opportunities. It is dangerous to stigmatise them all because of one cook."
Preventing further attempts, however, is complex, Rimon said. "We've not yet decided quite how to deal with it. Whatever we do will cost money, although it's very difficult to say how much at the moment."
In the meantime, a close watch will be kept on the remaining Arab kitchen staff, and the management will step up police and intelligence checks on all employees, he said.
Erez Ziv, chairman of the Israel Restaurants Association, dismissed fears of an outbreak of poisoning attempts, saying he did not believe it was likely to pose a serious challenge for Israel's restaurants.
But the new threat posed by the "poison terror attack" is just the latest challenge to be faced by already hard-pressed restaurant and bar owners as they struggle amid the hardships brought on by the combined effects of the Palestinian intifada, the economic recession and the slump in Israeli tourism.
The unprecedented violence that took place in March was a turning point for many of Israel's 11,000 bar and restaurant owners, when Palestinian militants systematically began targeting busy entertainment venues in a month of horror that killed 106 people.
"Since March, everything changed and everybody began to employ security guards," said Alon Sela, manager of the 80-seat Shanti bar-restaurant, tucked down a cobbled alley in central Jerusalem. Employing a guard has added another US$2,300 (£1,490) to his monthly outgoings.
At the Rimon Café, which Rimon said was the first restaurant in Israel to employ a full-time armed guard following the bombing of a nearby pizzeria which left 18 dead, the monthly cost is about US$9,000 (nearly £6,000).
For many, the security costs are simply too high. "The average cost of a security guard is $6,000 [£3,900] per month, but that can rise to US$14,000 [£9,000] a month in some establishments," Ziv said, adding that he knew of some 85 bars and restaurants that had closed over the past year due to a combination of the political and economic pressures.
