22-Apr-20: Jerusalem: Pandemic or not, the terrorism goes on

Teddy Stadium, Jerusalem [Image Source]

We haven't done much blogging lately. No, we're not traveling. Nor are we dealing with back-to-back meetings as sometimes has happened in a previous era.

But in the current circumstances with a virus-borne plague turning life upside down everywhere, we've been distracted with the exigencies of life: staying indoors at home, worrying about family, taking care of food and supplies, protective items and hygiene aids. And engaging in numerous on-line meetings and webinars.

We're planning to do some catching up, starting now.

It's always clear to anyone watching that the practitioners of terror are generally motivated enough to keep at it even when their targets are pre-occupied. That's been made manifest here via two troubling reports.

Word emerged in the past hour of terrorist arrests made by Israeli security in March. As reported by Times of Israel ["Shin Bet says it arrested Palestinians planning bombing of Jerusalem stadium"] today, the suspects are accused of

planning to carry out terror attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank, including a bombing in the capital’s Teddy Stadium, the Shin Bet security service says.... The three members of the terror cell — Ahmad Sajdaya, Muhammad Hammad, and Umar Eid — initially planned to construct a bomb and set it off in Teddy Stadium, performing reconnaissance operations and other preparations, before realizing that this would be too difficult to carry out due to the venue’s tight security. Instead, the trio planned to carry out bombing attacks on IDF troops in the West Bank and attempted a number of attacks last month... [They] also assisted in a number of attempted bombings against Israeli troops in recent years.

The Teddy Stadium, inaugurated in 1990 and named for long-time Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kolek, is owned by the Jerusalem municipality and has room for some 32,000 patrons. the largest sports stadium in the Middle East.

An updated report from Times of Israel adds these details:

• All three suspects were members of Kutla Islamiya, a university campus organization affiliated with the Islamist terrorists of Hamas.
• They got to know each when all three attended Birzeit University, located in Birzeit, near Ramallah, north of Jordan in an area controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Birzeit started life in 1924 as an elementary school for girls and acquired university status, while under Israeli control, in 1975.
• Sajdaya who is from Qalandiya has a history of involvement with explosive devices and lost part of a hand in a bomb preparation "accident" a few years ago.
• Eid, from Deir Jarir, holds an Israeli identity (blue) card. This helped him attend a soccer match at the Teddy Stadium a year ago. His goal was to gather intelligence with a view to blowing it up.
• Hammad, from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab, does not have permanent Israeli residency.

It's a developing story.

And earlier in the day [Wednesday] in Jerusalem again, a Palestinian Arab driving a van through a security crossing (commonly known as the Kiosk Checkpoint) east of Jerusalem near the city of Maale Adumim at about 8:00 am carried out a combined vehicle-ramming and stabbing attack. 

The attacker was eventually shot dead by armed Border Police forces after running down and hurting a twenty-year-old officer standing in the security checkpoint. The driver then leapt from his vehicle, brandishing a pair of scissors which he used to stab the already injured Israeli. This is captured in the security camera video above.

The as-yet unnamed Israeli is reported in moderate condition and recovering in hospital.

Times of Israel says a pipe-bomb was found in the attacker's possession, indicating advance planning (notwithstanding the use of scissors) and a desire to inflict more serious losses than running down an Israeli sceurity person would suggest.

In the Aljazeera version, the attacker is identified as Ibrahim Halsa, 25, from the village of Sawahra. If they're right, it's located on Jerusalem's south-eastern edge. Israel National News reports that a number of

"Arabs were injured in clashes in a-Sawahra village in the Jerusalem area, home of the Islamic operative who carried out the attack. Residents burned tires and IDF forces fired rubber bullets at them."

The late attacker's family, sad to relate, now become eligible under the Palestinian Authority's bizarre reward scheme ("Pay to Slay, it's commonly called) for the families of dead terrorists.
 

UPDATE 8:30 pm: And now reports of fires raging inside two of the several buildings that make up the Jerusalem City Hall complex. The Jerusalem Post says:

The fire began in the main building of the complex... Once the fire was detected emergency procedures were activated and police and firefighters were called to the scene. The cause of the fire is still unknown. Eight teams of firefighters are currently at work putting out the fire and searching for anyone who might be trapped in the building.
Police arrested a 40-year-old man for allegedly starting the fire. The man is reportedly a resident of East Jerusalem. Molotov cocktails were allegedly found at the scene, according to a Kan News report citing a City Hall official.

More when we know it.

15-Mar-16: A couple of near-invisible blips on the radar

Running for shelter in a southern Israel community
as a Gazan rocket approaches [A 2014 Reuter image]

Take a moment to consider two mostly-unreported events from last night (Monday) in the ongoing Arab-on-Israel terrorism lottery.

A rocket was fired into southern Israel around midnight. It of course came from some rocket launching pad operated by aspirational, terror-minded Gazan Arabs, and was fired in the vague, general direction of Israel in the evident hope of hitting something. Something painful to Israelis, naturally. Through good luck or providence - but not because of any lack of malicious intent - that goal was not achieved, and the inbound rocket

exploded in an open area in the Shaar Hanegev region of southern Israel. There were no physical injuries or damages. [Israel National News, March 14, 2016]

Times of Israel adds a few additional details, quoting the IDF: that it landed in an open area west of Sderot, and that Tzeva Adom, the IDF's alarm siren system for warning of incoming rocket attacks and giving people in the landing area a few seconds advance notice to rush their families to a place of relative shelter, did not go off

suggesting the rocket detection system deployed around Gaza calculated that the rocket would land far from populated areas. [Times of Israel]

Then in Jerusalem, another near-invisible blip on the news radar:

...[P]olice thwarted a stabbing attack planned by two Palestinian women at the HaZeitim Crossing checkpoint in east Jerusalem Monday night. According to police, the suspects – both from Abu Dis, and aged 24 and 29 – hid knives in their bags. When security personnel found the weapons, the women confessed to attempting to travel to the capital to carry out stabbing attacks against Jews. They were immediately placed under arrest... [Jerusalem Post, March 15, 2016]

People who think of these two attacks as insignificant near-misses will miss the point. Each could easily have brought tragedy into the lives of ordinary people on our side, the Israeli aspect of the conflict. That, in fact, was plainly the intention. In the first case, the attackers missed. In the second, they were detected and stopped before carrying out the violence they intended to inflict. In both cases, the assailants had no concrete targets - anything or anyone within Israel would have met their needs. And in both cases, they did essentially everything they needed to do in order to reach their goal.

That they failed says something about vigilance, fortune and/or fate. It certainly says nothing about any reduced appetite for killing on their side. There is no sign of an outbreak of calm or of a passion to co-exist or compromise emanating from their side. If and when good luck or divine intervention somehow fail us, there will be much worse outcomes from the inevitable (and yes, Palestinian Arab incitement to murder and savagery ensures that they are inevitable) attacks to come.

The forces pushing Palestinian Arabs, among them females and children, to throw away their lives and freedom in pursuit of martyrdom or merely attention are also barely understood. Consider what must have been the back-story to the efforts of the fifteen year-old Palestinian Arab girl, a child by any definition, who is the centerpiece of this blog post of ours: "22-Dec-15: A knife-wielding Palestinian Arab child and her two arrests".

It's not surprising that most people don't know about the worrying daily realities of the Arab-on-Israeli war of terror. Such daily "near-misses" and other failed or thwarted attacks are so rarely reported outside our neighborhood. They therefore have close-to-zero impact on public awareness of how people live their lives on a razor's edge in an ongoing war.

24-Jan-16: Saturday storms and deaths

Palestinian Arab girl with knife: Her mother says she's
small and how could she stab anyone [Image Source: Security
camera footage from yesterday's attack]

Though the region is passing through a period of intense cold and stormy weather, and with snow on the way tonight in Jerusalem, the capacity of Palestinian Arab society to churn out mindless acts of self-destruction in the name of a profound hatred goes on undiminished.

Here's how Saturday looked.

At about 8 in the morning when the sun was still shining, though weakly, a Palestinian Arab child of 13 was killed after attempting to stab an Israeli security guard at the entrance to Anatot, better known to Hebrew speakers as Almon, on Jerusalem's northern periphery. The official statement issued by the Israel Police spokesperson and quoted by Haaretz, says laconically the girl fought with her family before leaving home with a knife. It names her as Rokya Abu Eid (Ma'an names her as Ruqayya Eid Abu Eid) and says her family previously lived in the Yatta refugee camp near Hebron, but are now living in the village of Anata (population: about 10,000). Haaretz says the girl "ran toward the security guard with a knife. The guard shot her, and paramedics pronounced her death shortly after..." The New York Times, under a headline that conveys the editors's skepticism ["Palestinian Girl With Knife Killed by Israeli Guard, Police Say"] says, quoting Israeli sources, that the girl

quarreled with her family on Saturday morning and then left her home with a knife “intending to die.” She arrived at the settlement about 8 a.m., the police said in a statement, and ran toward the civilian guard at the entrance, who opened fire. Grainy security camera footage from the scene appeared to show a girl with a knife in her hand chasing a guard... [New York Times, January 24, 2016]

A pity the "intending to die" part didn't get into the headline but the "girl with knife killed... police say" did. Note that a British source, Telegraph UK, says

Her mother, Reeda Abu Eid, said there had been no trouble before her daughter left the family home, a tent in the Palestinian village Anata... "Ruqayya is a small girl, how could she stab someone?"

How indeed.

Tragically, small girls and small boys have killed, injured and maimed dozens of innocent Israelis in the past four months of terror attacks ["01-Dec-15: The pride of Palestinian Arab society: Monstrous mothers, sacrificed children"].

Yatta happens to be where the not-so-large fifteen-year-old male child charged with murdering Dafna Meir ["18-Jan-16: Multiple Arab-on-Israeli attacks and a Jewish mother is murdered at her front door"] last week by plunging a knife into her head came from. Incidentally, while Haaretz makes no mention of Israeli casualties in yesterday's knifing attack by the 13 year old child, this Iranian news-source report says "Several Israeli soldiers sustained injuries in Saturday’s purported stabbing attack." This might be true, though it's unlikely the Israeli injured would have included IDF personnel.

In southern Israel, in the midst of freezing rain and bitter cold around 10:40 pm last night (Saturday), men with rockets inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip launched yet another of the many thousands of rockets in their possession in the general direction of anything Israeli. This was another notable failure, a Fell Short, meaning their missile failed to get even as far as the Gaza/Israel fence and exploded somewhere inside Gaza, perhaps on top of some hapless Gazan family's home or their heads. While there are currently no reports of Palestinian Arab deaths, injuries or property damage emanating from Gaza, it has been clear in the past that embarrassing casualties or damage to property resulting from Fell Shorts tend not to be reported.

From an Arab source, a reminder of the preparations for the next war that are a fundamental part of life for those Gazan Palestinian Arabs. Yet another tunnel collapsed in the southern end of the Gaza Strip during Saturday, west of Khan Younis. (The last one was just a week ago: "15-Jan-16: A tunnel collapses in Gaza".) The sole named casualty this time is described as a "Hamas-affiliated militant" Ahmad Ashour al-Najjar, 26. He died in the collapse of what Hamas calls a "resistance" tunnel. Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the name Hamas uses to refer to its terrorists, "confirmed in a statement that al-Najjar was a member of the group". Ma'an offers as background that

A number of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in the vast tunnel networks that lie below the besieged enclave, which are largely used for smuggling in the coastal enclave's south and military purposes in the north. The Hamas movement which governs the strip is reportedly reconstructing a vast tunnel network intended to be used for carrying out attacks on Israeli military targets and civilians

In Abu Dis, on Jerusalem's northern margin, a Palestinian Arab male of 18 died when the explosive he was carrying went off. There's some doubt whether those explosives were strapped onto him and somehow exploded prematurely or whether he fell or slipped in trying to hurl the bomb at his target. In any event, no one other than the human bomb himself was hurt. His goal, it appears, was an assault on a manned IDF checkpoint at one of the entrances from East Jerusalem. The young dead man has a name, Muhammad Halbiya, according to one source; Nabil Halabiya, according to another. Haaretz says he will be buried this morning, to be followed by three days of public mourning. Whatever the matter to which he himself felt he was dedicating his life, his death plainly failed to achieve it.

Abu Dis has been in the news in recent weeks because of a bomb factory uncovered there by Israeli security ["24-Dec-15: Another terror outrage narrowly averted - and Shalit Deal releasees are again at the heart of the darkness"] and also because of a shooting attack on one of the security checkpoints in the area ["12-Jan-16: Tuesday terror attacks: one by shooting, one by knifing"], perhaps the same one as in yesterday's self-explosion, perhaps a different one.

No sign of the storm abating.

12-Jan-16: Tuesday terror attacks: one by shooting, one by knifing

An IDF security checkpoint near Abu Dis [Wikipedia image]

It can be disconcerting when the weather in Israel turns unusually mild and fine in the middle of winter. That's because the evidence suggests young Palestinian Arab men and women find it somehow more congenial to launch terror attacks on Israeli targets (read Israeli human bodies) at such times.

Today is one such day. So far, though they are barely noticed and almost completely unreported outside Israel, there have been two.

The IDF, quoted by Israel National News, says a small group of Arab gunmen opened fire on soldiers manning the Abu Dis security checkpoint, close to Bethlehem. They arrived at the target site by car, opened fire without inflicting any injuries (or worse) and quickly drove off. As we write this, a search is underway; none of the culprits has been apprehended yet.

The second was a stabbing attack. This afternoon around 1:00 pm, a Palestinian Arab assailant, brandishing a knife, lunged at an IDF soldier stationed at the Beit Anoun junction on Route 60, some 5 km north of Hebron and close to Kiryat Arba. (A similar attack, with a similar outcome, happened in the same area this past Thursday night.) Alert soldiers, presumably aware of the constant threat in the area and spotting the attacker, opened fire and ended the assault as well as the attacker's career. (Ma'an News Agency suggests two attackers were killed, but there is no confirmation of that from Israel as of the time we are writing this.) On the Facebook page of the terrorism-friendly Shehab News Agency, the dead knifer's portrait is already published along with the familiar salutes to his "martyrdom".

01-Jan-16: Storms ahead? Not everyone notices

Abbas and the inner circle of PA insiders [Image Source]

Soaking rain and the first significant storm of the winter season are greeting the first day of 2016 here in Jerusalem. There's a chance of snow tonight. Understandably, such are the matters on Israeli minds as people hunker down for an indoor Shabbat. 

Meanwhile in the news media, at least for those watching for such things, there are indications of approaching turbulence of a different sort. 

The Jerusalem Post this past Monday quoted a report by Gal Berger on Israel Radio's Reshet B of the same day [Hebrew audio of the Berger article here]. Berger recounts things he heard from an un-named "senior Palestinian official". In our words, here are some of them:

• Voices within the leadership of Fatah are currently calling for the resumption of 'suicide bombing' attacks. For the moment, Fatah's view is to wait before acting - in the words of the JPost report, to "see which way the wind is blowing". Fatah, in case it's forgotten, is headed by the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas.
• The current street violence, the Arab-on-Israeli attacks carried out daily for the past three months, is "sooner or later" going to be escalated . Fatah sees itself as being "forced" to "join the current uprising".
• Those same insiders, realizing that the young people who are at the bleeding edge of the current violence directed at Israelis, see an impending collapse of the PA establishment and its power. This is, naturally, Israel's fault.
• What's likely to happen next is a rechanneling of the Arab-on-Israeli street violence into physical attacks against the Palestinian Authority regime. When that happens, the Palestinian Arab political leadership - again, out of having "no choice" in the matter - will redefine how it relates to Israel. (He gave no indication of what the Palestinian Arabs would do for water, electricity, medical care and a long list of other civil services in the wake of such a redefinition.)
• "Lone wolf attacks" will proliferate and this will be "very difficult" to control.
• It's foreseeable that internal rivalries among the numerous Palestinian Arab factions and their competing with one other for popular support will produce bad outcomes. Israel's fault, again.

We have commented several times in the last few weeks about the incitement emanating directly from the PA's Abbas. When he stands in front of foreign media and global gatherings of polite politicians, he's for peace, against terror and manifestly moderate. When speaking in Arabic to the people who groan under the burden of being led by him, it's a very different story, like when he notoriously praised the terror being done on Israel's streets by Palestinian Arabs:

We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr (shahid) will reach paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah... The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours and they [the Jews, naturally] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem." "01-Dec-15: PA president: When the subject is terror, double-talk and blatant hypocrisy work"

Incitement clearly works. We summarized an under-reported Palestinian Arab public opinion survey ["14-Dec-15: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?"] which laid this bare: 

• They unambiguously support violent, armed violence against the Israelis: 60% support it today, up from 57% in the PSR September 2015 poll.
• The cohort most supportive of "an armed intifada and stabbings" is the one aged between 18 and 22. That's also the cohort most opposed to a two-state solution. In fact, the notion of a two-state solution, so admired by peace-oriented outsiders (like the Obama administration and the EU) and by 63% of Israelis in a 2013 poll, is rejected by a growing majority of Palestinian Arabs (54% today; 51% in the September 2015 poll.)
• Fully two-thirds of all Palestinian Arabs say they are in favour of stabbing attacks on Israelis. 
• About the same proportion are of the view that Abbas, elected in January 2005 to a four-year term as PA president, holding on tenaciously to his power for the past eleven years and with no election on the horizon, must resign. This doesn't happen because, as the poll shows, if presidential elections were held today, the Hamas candidate would defeat Abbas comprehensively. 

Another sign of very bad weather ahead: Hamas, according to Ynet yesterday (Thursday), has ordered its cells in the West Bank to launch "suicide" bombings against Israeli targets, and will target senior officials in the Israeli political and defence establishments. It is specifically targeting victims inside the so-called Green Line, the 1947 cease-fire line that is mischievously referred to often in the news media as the 1967 borders.

Hamas says it has "sleeper" cells in place and is now activating them. One such cell was the subject of a post here ["24-Dec-15: Another terror outrage narrowly averted - and Shalit Deal releasees are again at the heart of the darkness"] last week. Its members were discovered, interrogated and arrested in a joint Shin Bet/IDF operation in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Abu Dis, along with a sophisticated, well-stocked explosives lab that was preparing bombs for use against Israelis.

In yesterday's Ynet report, Hamas voices are quoted, saying 

the only reason the members of the cell were caught was that one of its members told a member of the Palestinian security forces of the cell's existence, asking him to obtain fake permits for him and the other cell members... [T]he other terror cells would not be exposed because their members have no record of security-related offenses that would make them suspects... ["Hamas planning suicide bombings, targeting Israeli officials", Ynet, December 31, 2015]

How separate are these Fatah/PA and Hamas efforts at ramping-up terror? Not as separate as they might appear. Times of Israel said yesterday that the reporter's unidentified source inside Hamas

claimed that it was maintaining ties with members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement... ["Hamas says it plans to resume suicide attacks in Israel"]

This ought to surprise no one. When the Abbas regime pays out millions of dollars each month in its ghastly, but mostly ignored, cash-for-terror payments scheme, who gets most of the money? Again, Reshet Bet's Gal Berger provides some clear answers via Jerusalem Post. He

managed to lay his hands on actual Palestinian Authority spreadsheets that show precisely which convicted terrorists behind Israeli bars the PA subsidizes and at what level...  Here are comprehensive statistics that illustrate exactly how the PA uses its resources – including moneys handed over monthly by Israel as well as contributions the PA solicits from international donors... Apprehended, convicted and incarcerated terrorists – including the linchpins of the ghastliest of mass murders – are paid substantial monthly stipends while they do time... The newly uncovered evidence, moreover, shows that the PA’s largesse isn’t limited to Fatah terrorists but that most of its outlays are earmarked for Hamas members... Organizational rivalries and political affiliations are no bar for PA generosity toward terrorists. This encourages bloodletting, and is part and parcel of the glorification of terrorism in the purportedly moderate Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah-ruled jurisdiction. The glorification – indeed near-deification – of mass murder is an integral component of incitement to terrorism by Abbas’s top hierarchy... It was never a secret that the PA financially underpinned the prisoners’ relatives, a fact that helped boost their heroic status. Now, however, we know exactly who gets what, down to such details as how much is deposited when into which particular account in which particular bank... The PA ’s own paperwork shows unambiguously that tens of millions of dollars are shelled out every month to imprisoned terrorists and their relations – at a time in which Abbas moans that Ramallah can’t make ends meet. ["PA Spreadsheets", Jerusalem Post, October 10, 2015]

Several of the terrorists convicted of their involvement in the massacre that took our daughter's life in August 2001 are included in the PA payments plan.

Berger's revelations, and the PA spreadsheets, received virtually no mainstream news coverage when they were revealed in October. Now, with much colder air and many dead on all sides, we're likely to to reap the harvest of that willful neglect.

24-Dec-15: Another terror outrage narrowly averted - and Shalit Deal releasees are again at the heart of the darkness

Al-Quds University students [Image Source]

This could have turned out very, very badly - and might still.

Right here in Jerusalem, side by side with ordinary, constructive lives being lived by most of the people who call this special city home, a cluster of death-cultists - yet another in a lengthening string of them, working in dark places and preparing unspeakably dark plans involving injuries, mayhem and deaths - has been stopped.

No one imagines they are the only such cluster of plotters or that there will not be others on the way. But these, at least, have been stopped for now.

No innocent civilians were hurt - at least, not for now. So news coverage of this important development has been sparse outside our beleaguered country, particularly as seasonal celebrations have the attention of most of Europe, Australia and the Americas. From Times of Israel:

The Shin Bet, alongside the IDF and Israel Police, have thus far arrested 25 Hamas operatives, the majority of them Al-Quds University in Abu Dis students, who they suspect were preparing to attack Israeli targets, the agency said in a statement. The arrests were carried out over the past few weeks. The service also uncovered a makeshift laboratory in Abu Dis, in east Jerusalem, which was being used to create the explosives necessary for bombing attacks. It said the cell was controlled by Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip... In addition to the Abu Dis terror cell, the Shin Bet also busted a [related] Bethlehem-based group... ["Hamas cell planned suicide and car bombings, Shin Bet reveals", Times of Israel, December 23, 2015]

Some of the plotters

The article makes clear that some of the intelligence that led to the unraveling of this group's plans came from interrogations carried out by PA security officers of Hamas people arrested by them. As we keep noting in this blog, Hamas operates throughout the areas occupied by the PA, in some places more publicly, in others less. Their hand, not to mention their flags and the signs of their terror-focused activities, are everywhere.

Among those arrested in this latest intercept:

• Ahmad Jamal Mousa Azzam, 24, from Qalqilya, at some point a student at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis: Considered the terrorist ringleader, and controlled from Gaza. He was given training by his handlers in "how to create explosive belts and vests, as well as improvised explosive devices". Once in, Azzam recruited the others, mostly from among the Al-Quds student body. Some of those were intended to become human bombs.
• Hazem Ziad Amran Sandouqa, 22, a resident of the Old City of Jerusalem and an Israeli citizen - therefore able to move around with relative ease, an obvious strategic advantage to the planning and execution of terror. 
• Fahdi Daoud Muhammad Abu Qaian, 19, also an Israeli citizen, a Bedouin from the Negev, and a designated attacker in the terror plot. Under interrogation, he confessed that he was being prepared for a bombing mission by means of an explosive vest or by driving an explosives-packed vehicle into an Israeli target (we're guessing the target would have consisted of human beings).
• Issa Nasser Issa Shoka, 19, an Al-Quds University student, a designated money courier and intending human bomb, as well as one of the leaders of the Bethlehem cell.
• Muhammad Waleed Ahmad Sarhkhan, 20, of the Bethlehem cell.
• Muhammad Na’im Issa Ali, 19, also from the Bethlehem cell, another intending human bomb.

Avi Issacharoff, in a follow-on article published last night ["What if the Hamas terror cell in Abu Dis had succeeded?", Times of Israel, December 23, 2015], looks at the dire consequences had this Hamas terrorist cell not been stopped:

The Palestinian Authority is surviving. And overall, Israeli citizens have become used to a sick reality in which almost every day Palestinians try to attack them. [But although] this weapons factory and infrastructure were discovered, the fact is that every passing day moves us closer to Second Intifada-style terrorism... [Issacharoff]

Viewing yesterday's IDF real-time video (above) of soldiers breaking into the Jerusalem lab and doing an inventory of the chemicals they found there turns this into something more real and immediate. For purposes of bomb making, the jihadist/murderers had stocked up (something we have not seen reported so far in the news) on nitro-glycerine and cyanide - they're shown clearly. That's in addition to an evil scientist's trove of lethal substances and explosives intended for killing and seriously harming people. Experience tells us those people would have been innocent Israelis, almost certainly civilians. That's how terror works.

Had, Heaven forbid, the Abu Dis/Bethlehem terror collective pulled off a "showcase" outrage

The Israeli government would have come under immense pressure to take steps against the PA, and the call for a closure of the major West Bank cities would have come from every direction. The pressure would likely have led to a ban on all Palestinian workers entering Israel, and possibly even to a widespread IDF operation in one or more West Bank cities... Tens of thousands more unemployed Palestinians would be on the streets, with hundreds of thousands affected by their loss of income. More violent confrontations with young Palestinians would likely ensue. The fraying of cooperation between the PA security forces and the IDF would be inevitable, maybe even a complete severance of such cooperation. And at the end of that slippery slope, the collapse of the PA itself... [T]hat’s precisely why Hamas has been trying so hard to set up an infrastructure capable of carrying out suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, including inside sovereign Israel... Hamas is avoiding a direct confrontation with Israel in Gaza but is doing a lot to heat things up in the West Bank. Senior Hamas operatives in Gaza know they have a certain amount of immunity from Israel, because Israel does not want another major conflict there. The people who are today orchestrating the effort to carry out attacks are mostly Hamas members who were freed in the 2011 Shalit exchange — West Bankers who were exiled to Gaza under the deal. Somebody in Israel evidently believed, or wanted to believe, that confining them to Gaza would reduce the danger they presented. Except that even from Gaza, these people have now become a central headache for Israel in the West Bank... [Issacharoff]

We blogged last month ["27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"] about the meaningfully-malevolent role of Shalit Deal releasees. And we offered more background here: "11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising".

The price paid by Israeli society - and in a meaningful sense also by the Palestinian Arabs - for this catastrophic transaction keeps growing. Yet there remains, it has to be said and with some pain, a striking unwillingness among the insiders of our government to properly analyze what was done, reach operative conclusions and express sincere regret. It's surely called for.

03-Dec-15: Thursday morning north Jerusalem shooting attack - gunman is a PA officer

The PA shooter and his current-model Hyundai sedan from
which he launched this morning's attack [Source]

While we have been away from our desks and busy with life, the lethal Arab-on-Israeli violence has continued along lines similar to those of the past two months.

This morning (Thursday) around 11:00, at the Hizme security checkpoint on Jerusalem's north side, two Israeli men were injured in a shooting attack, each suffering moderate wounds. One was a male of 47, the other a uniformed IDF soldier.

Both were hit when a Palestinian Arab opened fire on them; according to Ynet's account, the shooting was done from a moving vehicle near the checkpoint, while Times of Israel, quoting IDF sources, says the gunman stopped his car at Hizme, got out and only then, standing on firm ground and presumably with his unsuspecting victims in his sights, opened fire. Both news sources agree that alert Israeli service personnel at the checkpoint shot back at him, and he was killed on the spot.

The more seriously injured of the two Israelis was rushed to the emergency room of Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Karem hospital for treatment.

There has been considerable media attention here around the identity of the dead gunman. Haaretz, quoting Palestinian Arab sources, says

the assailant behind the attack is Mazan Hasan Ariva, an intelligence officer in the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Authority and Palestinian security forces have yet to respond to the report.

Ma'an News Agency, an Arab press service based in Bethlehem, transliterating his name differently, says

The Palestinian liaison department identified the Palestinian as Mazin Hasan Ureiba from Abu Dis. Ureiba was an officer in the Palestinian Authority general intelligence service and a father of four, sources told Ma'an.

The headline of that report, in accordance with Palestinian Arab journalistic conventions ("Never own up to anything") calls this an "alleged shooting attack". And on Channel 2's 8:00 pm Thursday night evening news, a cousin of the shooter is interviewed, disputing that Ariva/Ureiba did any of the things that the Israelis have charged.

"Alleged" attack: For Ma'an, headlines are an integral
part of the war [Source]

Ma'an's Arabic edition gives his name as Oraiba Mazen Hassan [مازن حسن عريبة]. Searching the Arabic media via that search term, we learned [here] that Fatah - whose head is Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president - has declared three days of mourning and mass strike in Abu Dis, the gunman's home-town as well as asking for community support to help the widow and her children.

For anyone paying attention, initiatives like this make a mockery of Mahmoud Abbas' very public claims that his "Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms" [mentioned in yesterday's post: "01-Dec-15: PA president: When the subject is terror, double-talk and blatant hypocrisy work"]. It's hard to blame the 80 year-old kleptocrat, who has devoted a lifetime to the dark science of speaking out of both sides of his very political mouth at the same time, for trying. After all, most of the time, it works. But why he is taken at face value by clever news reporting people - that, to our way of thinking, remains a real puzzle.

How unusual is it to find that salaried members of the PA armed forces are engaged in acts of terrorism like this morning's?

The answer, as the facts considered in a landmark ruling, Sokolow v PLO, in February 2015 show, is "not very". In that long-running litigation, started in 2004, the jury in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, found the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization liable for damages suffered by American families whose relatives were injured or killed in attacks in Israel:

The plaintiffs argued that the two organizations supported the attacks—whether through direct involvement or assistance in the form of material support or training. They also allegedly paid those who carried out the attacks and continue to compensate perpetrators who were imprisoned, as well as the families of those who died. Since the plaintiffs are all U.S. citizens, the case was tried in this country under the Antiterrorism Act signed into law by then president Bill Clinton in 1996, which gives American courts jurisdiction over acts of terrorism that harm U.S. citizens abroad...  ["U.S. Jury Finds Palestinian Organizations Liable in Terrorism Case", Newsweek, February 23, 2015]

In the spirit of thinking about how badly the Palestinian Arabs have been served for decades by their own ruling class, it's worth noting that the gunman's bosses' bosses' boss, the head of the PA's general intelligence service, Majid Faraj, was charged in a January 2015 complaint to the International Criminal Court, with torture and crimes against humanity in violation of the Rome Statute. Naturally enough, his victims are not Israelis but fellow Palestinian Arabs.

10-Nov-15: Jerusalem: Yet another knifing attack

On Jerusalem's eastern edge, another attempted stabbing attack has been narrowly averted:

An Arab terrorist attempted to conduct a stabbing attack on Tuesday afternoon at Hakiosk Checkpoint, located near Abu Dis to the east of Jerusalem. His intention of stabbing Border Police officers was thwarted however, as the security personnel beat him to the punch and shot him, neutralizing the terrorist. Initial reports indicate the terrorist approached the checkpoint with a drawn knife, rushing towards the combat soldiers while shouting "Allahu akbar" (Allah is greater). They called for him to stop several times, and when he refused and continued charging them they shot him down. [Israel National News]

The day is not yet over.