The Department of Defense announces the guidelines for the military commissions authorized to try suspected terrorists captured during the campaign against terrorism. At the same time Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asserts that the United States has the right to hold detainees without trial, or even after acquittal, until the end of the war against terrorism, as is standard with enemy combatants captured during the course of a war.

The restaurant of the Park Hotel in Netanya, one day after it was attacked by a suicide bomber. © AP Photo/Jerome Delay Twenty-nine people are killed in the suicide bombing of a Passover dinner in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya. The bomber is identified as a member of Hamas from the West Bank city of Tulkarem.

Israel launches Operation Defensive Shield – a series of military incursions into West Bank towns. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announces that the purpose of the operation is to "crush the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure," and describes Yasser Arafat as an enemy who will be "isolated." Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer claims that the security forces are engaged in "an all-out war against terrorism."