09-Feb-17: Islamists claim credit for today's Arab-on-Israeli rockets, shootings, stabbings:

Eilat by night [Image Source]

Two very different Arab-on-Israeli terrorist attacks today are major talking points within Israel - and almost entirely unreported and unanalyzed beyond our borders.

Around 11 o'clock Wednesday night, a barrage of missiles were fired at nearby Eilat from a site in the Sinai desert. The Jerusalem Post, quoting the IDF's Southern Command, reported that four rockets were fired, three of them being safely intercepted in mid-air by its Iron Dome defense system. (Click for a video of one such intercept.) Several people were treated for shock in Eilat's Yoseftal Medical Center hospital.

Haaretz reported during Thursday afternoon that ISIS is claiming to be behind the attack:

The Islamic State group's affiliate in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the barrage of rockets fired at the southern city of Eilat Wednesday night. The ISIS-aligned Amaq news agency announced that the affiliate, which calls itself the Sinai Province, fired several Grad rockets toward the Red Sea resort city. The report stated that the war against "the infidels" will continue and that the war against ISIS will not help the unbelievers. It added that future attacks would be much more severe.

Then this evening (Thursday), between five and eight people (accounts vary) were injured in a shooting/stabbing attack on Baron Hirsch Street, Petah Tikva near the city's outdoor market during it busiest hours of the week. The attacker, armed with what Ynet calls a makeshift rifle, opened fire on unsuspecting civilians standing at a bus stop and walking around the market. His weapon jammed as he got to a sewing-machine shop and at that point he began attacking people with a screwdriver. Someone threw (yes) a sewing machine at him, causing him to fall to the ground. Eye witnesses say he screamed "help, help" and was then helped by being arrested.

He turns out to be a 19-year-old male from a village near Nablus. (Ma'an News Agency names it as Beita.) Tonight he is under arrest and in an Israeli hospital where his injuries are being treated. Several of the people he attacked were rushed to nearby Rabin Medical Center at the Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. No one's life is in danger, fortunately.

He was still in possession of the gun used in the attack when arrested, according to a police spokesperson quoted by Times of Israel.

The Islamist terror regime in Gaza, Hamas, praised the attack as a “natural result” of Israeli crimes, according to a Times of Israel report but stopped short of claiming credit - though, in traditional manner, it urged other Palestinian Arabs to follow the attacker's example.