Israel to act after soldier and woman killed in stabbings

Israel reinforced military and police deployments throughout the country last night and declared that Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives will be targeted for arrest.

The move followed two separate stabbing attacks yesterday that left an Israeli woman and a soldier dead, amid a growing public insecurity, reminiscent of the period of the Palestinian intifada uprising of 2000 when militant attacks were a daily occurrence.

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has prided himself on the fact that during his three terms as premier Israelis have enjoyed relative security. This is no longer the case and his popularity has been slipping recently.

Months of unrest in Jerusalem, fanned by ongoing tension over the Temple Mount, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims, spread to the Israeli Arab sector over the weekend after Israeli police shot and killed a knife-wielding man in the Galilee village of Kfar Kana, who appeared to be walking away from a police van.

Lone assailants

Yesterday’s incidents indicate that the violence, still largely spontaneous and committed by lone assailants, rather than members of terror cells, may be spreading to the

West Bank

and Israel proper.

The Israeli woman (25) was killed when a Palestinian tried to ram his car into a group of Israelis waiting at a hitching stop close to the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, south of Jerusalem.

After his vehicle hit a barrier the man attacked the hitchhikers with a knife, killing the woman, a resident of the Tekoa settlement, and wounding two other people before being shot and seriously wounded by a security guard. The attack occurred opposite the hitching stop where three Israeli teenagers were abducted and killed in June, sparking off an escalation that eventually led to the 50-day Gaza war. The Palestinian assailant was identified as a 30-year-old resident of the West Bank city of Hebron, a supporter of the Islamic Jihad, who had served a prison term for throwing a petrol bomb at an Israeli vehicle.

Fatally wounded

Earlier, an Israeli soldier was stabbed and fatally wounded close to a Tel Aviv train station by an 18-year-old Palestinian resident of Nablus, the West Bank’s largest city. Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran praised the Tel Aviv stabbing. “This is a welcome step in the right direction that shows the tenacity of our people to resist the occupation and fight its crimes in al-Aqsa and Jerusalem.”

Public security minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, who arrived at the site of the Tel Aviv stabbing, was heckled by a crowd who asked "Where is the security?" and called out "Death to the terrorists."

Mr Netanyahu held emergency security consultations last night as right-wing politicians called for harsher measures, similar to the Israeli army’s re-entry into West Bank Palestinian cities after suicide bombings in 2002.

He called for legal measures, including house demolitions, to be used against those carrying out attacks, and again blamed the Palestinian Authority, which he accused of incitement. He told the Knesset that terror was being directed at all parts of the country for a simple reason.

“The terrorists, the inciters, want to drive us from everywhere,” he said. “As far as they are concerned, we should not be in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or anywhere. I can promise you one thing – they will not succeed. We will continue to fight terror . . . and we will defeat it together.”