30-Dec-16: On Jerusalem's northern edge, another Palestinian Arab woman and her knife

A Times of Israel bulletin this morning reports on yet another attempt by a knife-wielding Arab female to kill her some Israelis. Fortunately, like most - but not all - such attempts in the past 16 months, this was thwarted by fast-moving Israeli security personnel.

Security forces shot and wounded a Palestinian woman on Friday at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the West Bank as she tried to carry out a stabbing attack, police said. There were no other injuries. “She approached the security forces with a knife in her hand. She did not respond to the calls of the soldiers to stop,” police said, adding that the threat was “neutralized.” Soldiers fired at her legs when she refused to stop. She was “lightly” wounded and arrested, police said... The Qalandiya crossing has two approach lanes, one for pedestrians and the other for vehicles. Israel Radio reported that she came through the vehicle lane...

There's a dramatic photo [here] of the attacker lying on the ground after taking some bullets from Israeli security personnel, but unfortunately none showing her getting medical assistance from Israeli medics. To restate the outcome, she's lightly hurt and will live.

As for why women:

Defense officials have pointed to a trend among some young Palestinian women who, often due to personal problems, have in recent months attempted to commit suicide by staging knife attacks against soldiers and police with the expectation that they will be shot.

The Arab news industry never notes this but sticks rigorously to assertions that the attack was alleged and somehow never real. Ma'an News Agency's report at this hour illustrates this:

A Palestinian woman was injured after being shot by Israeli soldiers at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem in the central occupied West Bank, for allegedly attempting to stab Israeli soldiers Friday morning... Lawyer Muhammad Mahmoud of prisoners' rights group Addameer told Ma'an that the woman was identified as Jihan Muhammad Hashimeh, 35, from the neighborhood of al-Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem. Locals said that Hashimeh was ill, and that she was on her way to Jerusalem for medical treatment when she entered the vehicle lane by mistake.

As for her knife (a photo of which appears in a Tweet posted by the foreign press spokesperson for Israel Police), Ma'an presumably views its existence too as "alleged".

Qalandiya and its very busy security checkpoint - large numbers of people enter through it each day - is on Jerusalem's northern edge. Click here to view some of the many posts we have published here of terror attacks that have been launched in its vicinity.

In the most recent one ["13-Dec-16: Qalandiya and another vehicle-ramming attack on Israelis"], the assailant was also a Palestinian Arab female. Like today's attempted stabber, she too was fortunate enough to survive to talk about it afterwards. As for recent Arab-on-Israeli stabbing attacks, click here for some of our many previous posts.