01-Sep-16: Yet another young Palestinian Arab woman's dreams of glory-by-stabbing are thwarted this evening in north Jerusalem

Tonight's attempted stabbing at Qalandiya as reported
by a Palestinian Arab news site

Food for thought for those who claim Israel's security checkpoints are superfluous and exist merely to harass.

Alert Israeli security personnel apprehended a young Palestinian Arab woman of about 21 around 9 o'clock this evening (Thursday) as she sought to walk through the busy Qalandiya Checkpoint on the main road between Jerusalem and the PA administrative capital, Ramallah.

Israel's Channel 2 news this evening, quoted by Times of Israel, said she was from Al-Azariya and that she admitted to the security people that she was intending to carry out a terrorist attack. A knife was found concealed in her clothes or bag.

Another knifing attack was thwarted at the same location just this past Saturday afternoon [report] when a different young Palestinian Arab woman, also in her twenties, was stopped by security personnel and found to be carrying a knife in her bag.

And a month before that, again at Qalandiya, yet another young Palestinian Arab woman, this time just 18, was shot in the leg by Israeli security people as she rushed towards them, armed with a knife, and tried to stab them. In that July 26, 2016 intercept [report], the assailant was left with light injuries and treated at the scene by an ambulance crew from Magen David Adom before being removed from the scene to assist the authorities in their enquiries.

The Qalandiya crossover is on the edge of the once-busy industrial zone of Atarot, on the northern edge of Jerusalem. Apart from previous terror attacks of which there have been many [links], it's been in the news recently because of plans announced by an Israeli supermarket entrepreneur, Rami Levy, to erect the first "Israeli-Palestinian mall" [see this backgrounder from June 28, 2016]:

Levy’s company has been working hard to make sure the stores will reflect the local population, including finding Palestinian retailers and private shops to rent storefronts. Currently, most of the Palestinian stores that have reserved space are food suppliers, including the well-known Palestinian bakery Sinokrot. Another possible store will be the famous Zalatimo candy store. At one point, Levy had reeled one of the biggest Palestinian wholesalers of electronics, but after the deal was made, the potential client got cold feet. “There are many who are not afraid. I have rented to many Palestinians. I don’t know exactly happened, but he became scared for political reasons.” [Times of Israel, June 28, 2016]

Al-Azariya, a hard-scrabble Jerusalem village which figures in Biblical accounts under another name - Bethany - has produced a string of Palestinian Arab terror attackers in the past couple of years. One such attack, by a 16 year old boy from that village on December 3, 2014, was directed at... customers at another branch of the Rami Levy supermarket chain [see "03-Dec-14: Stabbing attack inside an Israeli supermarket", and "4-Dec-14: Knifing attack on shoppers in an Israeli supermarket: the aftermath".

4-Dec-14: Knifing attack on shoppers in an Israeli supermarket: the aftermath

Lazar Berman, writing in Times of Israel this morning ["Supermarket owner says he won’t let terror attackers win"], quotes supermarket entrepreneur Rami Levy. The Ramy Levy chain has a major presence in the West Bank and is notably popular with both Israelis and Palestinians and a significant employer of Palestinian Arabs.

Levy says yesterday's knifing attack in the Mishor Adumim branch of his eponymous chain "wouldn't keep customers from his stores". He will continue to employ Arab workers alongside Jewish workers as he has till now. 180 people are employed in that Mishor Adumim branch. 

Levy said: 

"I call on people to come more, to this branch and to every place there is a stabbing, just like I call on people to come more to Jerusalem".

Security cameras captured the moments of the frenzied attack on unsuspecting civilians - see the YouTube clip above, focused on the wine aisle. The two knifing victims, both of them men in their 50s, suffered light to moderate injuries. One was stabbed in the head, the other in the hand. Both were rushed to a Jerusalem hospital for emergency treatment and are thankfully recovering.

The attacker turns out to be a 16-year-old Arab male from the West Bank town of al-Azariya on the outskirts of Jerusalem, who arrived at the supermarket with two accomplices from his hometown; they too were arrested after the attempted murders. He is in the photograph above, which is taken from Wednesday's New York Times. The man who eventually stopped him by firing his pistol is an off-duty member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security detail who happened to be in the store.

It's not at all hard to imagine a knife-artist like this punk being torn limb from limb in a different setting far from Mishor Adumim. But this particular aspiring terrorist was removed from the scene by solicitous and professional ambulance men and is now being made all better in a Jerusalem hospital - a first-rate, world-class Israeli Jerusalem hospital.

For the haters of Israel who will never see these words, it's worth our noting that the mayor of Ma’ale Adumim, Benny Kashriel, says in the same Times of Israel article that while there will inevitably be demands for Palestinian Arabs to be excluded now from the Mishor Adumim area (it happens to be a significant industrial zone where many Arabs have well-paid jobs), he remains "committed to ensuring that they continue to work at Mishor Adumim and make a decent living".

We are waiting to see which of the numerous Palestinian Arab terror industry operations claims credit for the attempted killings in the supermarket. No one has till now, but it's bound to come.  And right after it, sadly, the first claims that Israel is again oppressing Palestinian Arab children like the 16 year old knifer in the video.