News
Three West Bank stabbings thwarted; Kerry urges Abbas to curb incitement
Israeli forces prevented three attempted West Bank stabbings yesterday, as Palestinian efforts to attack Israelis continued.
In the first of the incidents yesterday morning, at the Tapuach Junction, a 17-year-old Palestinian girl was asked to stop as she moved towards a hitchhiking post. When she refused to halt, a patrol commander cocked his weapon, at which point the suspect raised her hands and dropped a knife. When questioned, the teenager said she intended to carry out a stabbing, having been inspired to do so partly by social media videos.
Hours later, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy from a village near Hebron, attempted to open the door of an army vehicle and stab a soldier. He was overpowered by troops and handcuffed without any shots being fired. Soon after, back at the Tapuach Junction, another teenage Palestinian assailant attempted to stab soldiers and was fatally shot, later dying of his wounds. 16-year-old Qusai Diab Abu Al-Rub was buried in his hometown of Kabatiya, south of Jenin.
Last week, Israel’s Shin Bet security service released statistics on the near-daily attacks on Israelis since the start of October. It detailed 238 terrorist attacks or attempted attacks. 37 per cent of the attackers were aged 16 to 20, with a further 10 per cent even younger, while 11 per cent of the assailants were women.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry met yesterday with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in Jordan’s capital Amman. Kerry reiterated Washington’s commitment to the two-state solution, while the discussion also included the situation at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which has been an epicentre of the current violence. State Department spokesman John Kirby said, “The secretary [Kerry] continued to urge for calm and a decrease in violence, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric.” Israeli leaders have long accused Palestinian leaders, in particular Abbas of stoking the violence with inflammatory language, especially over claims that Israel intends to alter the status quo at the Temple Mount.