The family of a Palestinian youth who stabbed an Israeli soldier inspect their house after a search operation by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank town of Jenin.
AFP/Jerusalem
An Israeli soldier died yesterday after a Palestinian youth stabbed him on board a bus in the north of the country, police said.
“The Israeli soldier who was stabbed this morning by a Palestinian on a bus at the Afula bus station has died of his wounds in hospital,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
The soldier, identified as Eden Atias, 19, was stabbed on a bus that had just arrived in the northern city and was taken to an intensive care unit.
“We consider this incident to be a terrorist attack motivated by nationalism,” Rosenfeld added.
The 16-year-old Palestinian from near Jenin in the northern West Bank, who was in Israel without permits, was detained by passengers and security forces on the bus, he said. The assailant, identified in Palestinian media as Hussein Ghawdra, told security forces investigating his motive that two family members were imprisoned in Israel, police said.
The Israeli army surrounded the Ghawdra family home in Bir al-Basha, south of Jenin, an AFP correspondent reported.
Hamas, the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip, congratulated the suspected attacker.
“Congratulations to the Palestinian West Bank hero who killed an Israeli soldier in Afula this morning,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum wrote on his Facebook page.
“This is a heroic act of resistance showing that all methods of oppression and terror have not and will not succeed in stopping our people from carrying out jihad and resistance.”
Hawkish Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon of the ruling right-wing Likud party called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend the release of Palestinian prisoners, to which Israel committed itself before renewing peace talks with the Palestinians.
“These ongoing talks are deluding both the Israeli public as well as the Palestinians,” he said in a written statement. “We must put an end to this obvious collision course.”
Speaking in parliament later in the day, Netanyahu did not imply any intention to impose sanctions on the Palestinians, but blamed them for “incitement” that led to the incident.
Netanyahu said Ghawdra was exposed to “an educational system, with incitement in the Palestinian mosques. If we want true peace, the incitement must stop.”