Israeli Embassy Won’t Be Rebuilt on Site Demolished by Terror Bomb

Yitzhak Shefi, Israel’s ambassador to Argentina, has confirmed that the embassy will not be rebuilt on the site it occupied before it was blown up by a terrorist bomb on March 17.

“We are looking for a safer place,” the ambassador said on his return from a trip to Israel.

The embassy is temporarily housed on the ninth floor of a skyscraper in the heart of the city. Some building occupiers and former neighbors had publicly protested any intention to rebuild in the same place because of fear for their safety.

Thirty people were killed and some 250 injured when the bomb rocked the embassy.

“We still have to define precisely the new building’s characteristics” and “how much we are going to spend,” Shefi said.

He admitted for the first time that “the Israeli experts invited by the Argentine government to take part in the investigation couldn’t determine if the explosive that caused the tragedy was inside or outside the building.”

Shefi’s statement did not, however, support versions on the street immediately after the explosion that claimed it had been the embassy’s own “arsenal” that had blown up.

After the bombing, Argentine President Carlos Menem said it was not clear whether the bomb had exploded inside or outside the embassy building. Construction had been going on at the site, and the president noted that explosives could have been brought in with construction material.

The Interior Ministry had said the blast was probably caused by a car bomb.

The Argentine government’s official report, published May 7, said 12 pounds of plastic explosives, made from a material not available in Argentina, were concealed in a pickup truck outside the embassy.