28-Dec-17: At a northern Jerusalem security checkpoint, a girl with knives and stabbing victims on her mind

Qalandiya Crossing and some of its security personnel who watch for
attackers [Image Source]

Barely noticed by reporters and overwhelmingly ignored by mainstream news editors, there has been a non-lethal security incident at one of the main entry points through which Palestinian Arabs pass on their way into Israel's capital city, Jerusalem.

But non-lethal was not the goal of the attacker.

A Palestinian teen was arrested Wednesday after trying to illegally enter Israel and allegedly carry out a terror attack, police said. The suspect, an 18-year-old female, was turned away at the Qalandiya crossing near Jerusalem, and later tried to cross again using her 7-year-old sister’s permit. When she was refused, she began arguing with border guards and tried to force her way in, a police spokesperson said. During subsequent questioning, the teen admitted to planning an attack in the Jerusalem area. A source with knowledge of the case told The Times of Israel that the Palestinian planned to buy a knife and stab a police officer. The woman, from the town of Qataneh, was jailed, pending a remand hearing. Her name was not released by police... ["Palestinian teen caught planning stabbing attack — police", Times of Israel, December 27, 2017]

You might want to note how:

• The terror-minded suspect is about the same age as the young woman from Nabi Saleh of whom we wrote earlier this week ["24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey"]. "Girls" of seventeen or eighteen are older, often by several years, than a steady stream of Palestinian Arab teens who have perpetrated (or been thwarted trying) terrorist Arab-on-Israeli attacks during the past two years. [Click on "Weaponizing Children" for dozens such recent cases.]
• News about Jerusalem gets remarkably uneven coverage in the mainstream news industry. The decision of the Trump Administration to recognize that Israel's capital city for the past seventy years has been Jerusalem got vastly more coverage, even though no one's life was directly threatened by it.
• In Qataneh (sometimes written Qatane), from where yesterday's would-be attacker lived, Israeli forces two years ago uncovered a massive weapons cache that included ammunition, knives, IDF uniforms and binoculars [source]. The village is located right next to the Israeli community of Har Adar, 12 km north of Jerusalem. The neighborhood has been in the news recently for the worst kind of reasons ["26-Sep-17: At Har Adar's entrance, an Arab-on-Israeli shooter with problems and a solution"] 
• The security personnel who man the Qalandiya Crossing have realistic expectations by now of what some Palestinian Arabs, and in particular children, have on their minds. Consider for instance events that took place there just a few months back: "20-May-17: A child, a knife and another thwarted stabbing today on Jerusalem's northern edge". That attack-child was 14.

Over at Israel National News, their report of Wednesday's thwarted attack includes this rather poignant additional commentary:

The police said that "the soldiers and policemen work throughout the year at the crossings around the Jerusalem area and in their activities constitute human shields for the residents [of the city], prevent the entry of unauthorized persons into Israel and the smuggling of weapons. This is all in order to protect the residents of the State of Israel."

We can relate to this.

On the day our 15 year-old daughter Malki and 14 other innocents were murdered in the Hamas attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, the terrorist bomber and her human bomb passed through this same security crossing, Qalandiya. Tragically, no one thought to stop and interrogate the young man with the guitar case slung across his back that afternoon. In those simpler times, we didn't know our neighbours included people with the monstrous capacity to conceal a massively-explosive, shrapnel-packed weapon-of-mass-destruction inside a musical instrument container and then go looking for Jewish children to kill and maim.

Ahed Tamimi, the woman from Nabi Saleh now being called "girl" in much of the heavy media coverage, danced at the wedding of her cousin, the Sbarro massacre mastermind. Like other members of the Tamimi clan, she identifies with the achievement of the convicted-murderer and celebrates the deed and the doer.

26-Sep-17: At Har Adar's entrance, an Arab-on-Israeli shooter with problems and a solution

The aftermath of today's killings outside Har Adar [Image Source: AFP]

Around 7:15 this morning (Tuesday), at the entrance to the north Jerusalem suburban community of Har Adar, a gunman - part of a milling crowd of Palestinian Arab laborers waiting to be allowed through the security check to start their day's work - opened fire on the Border Guard men at the barrier.

Three were killed, a fourth was critically injured and is fighting for his life at this hour in a Jerusalem hospital. The gunman was shot dead.

Times of Israel names the three murdered young Israeli men:

• Border Guard staff sergeant Solomon Gavriyah, 20, from Be’er Yaakov. He did his mandatory national service with the Border Guard and then continued with them, doing police work in the Jerusalem seam area along the 1947 armistice line that outsiders often refer to misleadingly as a border. He was lightly injured in the hand during a terror stabbing in the area a year ago. His funeral is now set for 5 pm today in Be’er Yaakov's military cemetery. His parents, two sisters and a brother survive him.
• Civilian security guard Youssef Ottman, 25, from the nearby Israel Arab town of Abu Ghosh. He will be buried there later today. Ottman is described as “a quiet guy who got along with everyone”, and the son of an established and successful family. He is survived by parents and siblings, including a sister who was married last week.
• Civilian security guard Or Arish, 25, from the Har Adar community itself. His funeral is at 4:30 this afternoon at Jerusalem's main cemetery in  Givat Shaul.

The fourth victim, not yet publicly named, is the community security officer for Har Adar, a man of 33. He underwent emergency surgery at Hadassah Medical Center hospital in Ein Kerem, Jerusalem from where his condition is described as stable and moderate.

Today's murdered Israelis (left to right): Arish, Gvariyah, Ottman
[Image Source]

The terrorist is identified [here] as Nimer Mahmoud Ahmad Jamal, a laborer with a history of family violence, from nearby Bayt Surik, an Arab village of about 4,000 residents. (Here's something we wrote some months ago about one of his nearby neighbours: "14-Dec-16: In Jerusalem's Old City this afternoon, an Arab-on-Israeli stabbing").

The troubles in his private life notwithstanding, the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, says he had no known background in terrorist activities. A father of four, he held a legal work permit making him one of few Palestinian Arabs holding such privileges to have committed a terror attack in recent years.

In its report on the terrorist killings, the New York Times today says the killer was well known in Har Adar. He was expected at the home of a member of the local council this morning where he had some work to do - cleaning work, according to Israel National News. NYT quotes residents of Har Adar telling Israel’s Galei Zahal Army Radio this morning that the attacker had had "personal problems", with his wife recently leaving him and going off to Jordan. Other sources mention she left the children behind with him. There's no word yet on where they are or who is caring for them. It clearly won't be their father.

One Har Adar resident quoted by Israel National News says

the terrorist was one of many PA workers who enter the town for work on a regular basis. “Every day, dozens of workers enter the community through the back gate. Some work inside the community in construction and housework for families, and others work on the outskirts. They undergo an inspection and body search, and there are good relations between the residents of Har Adar and the workers,” she said. “We know the terrorist, he worked as a cleaner at several houses in the community,” she added. “It’s scary to think what would have happened if he had succeeded in passing the checkpoint and gotten to the school that is several meters away, or to one of the houses nearby.”

The killer himself let those closest to him know what was coming:

In his final message to his wife, which was released after the attack by the Israeli army, Jamal, who had worked for years as a house cleaner in Har Adar, mourned her departure and said he had been a terrible husband to her. “When you wake up in the morning, share this message on my page. Let your conscience rest. You were a good wife, Umm Baha [mother of Baha], and a compassionate mother and I was the one who behaved badly,” he wrote... “I say this in full awareness: my wife had nothing to do with what will happen tomorrow.” ["Wife of Har Adar terrorist left him weeks before shooting", Times of Israel, September 26, 2017]

Though we can speculate, we don't really know what the dead shooter's problems were. But if all or some of them were economic, he and the loathsome PA leadership under president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas have just solved them. 

As Palestinian Media Watch observes in a bulletin a few hours ago and as we have written extensively (click "Rewards for Terror" to view dozens of our posts on this painful subject), the Palestinian Authority pays salaries to terrorists and to families of dead attackers - "martyrs" in their terminology - as part of an incentive scheme that ensures the blood keeps flowing.

According to PA regulations, the murderer's family will immediately receive a 6,000 shekel grant and an additional 2,600 shekels each month for life, based on the following formula:  

• 1,400 shekels each month - base allowance;
• 400 shekels additional each month for each wife;
• 200 shekels additional each month for each child.

This terrorist had one wife and four children so his family will receive 2,600 shekel every month for life.

The PA is perpetually broke, and always will be as long as there are foreign aid providers ready to respond to their malevolent pan-handling. The notorious PA Rewards for Terror scheme can only continue because of the willingness of the providers of foreign aid to pretend not to know about the payments scheme and its enabling role in the despicable culture of death the Abbas regime, and Arafat before him, stitched together to ensure the perpetuation of their people's misery and a steady stream of martyrs' funerals.

26-Sep-17: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?

[Image Source: PCR]

It's been about nine months since we last addressed the core question of what Palestinian Arab opinion polls tell us about their hopes, fears, ambitions and values. That last review is here: "15-Dec-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?"

As it happens, this morning has gotten off to a really rotten start with another Arab-on-Israeli terror attack at the entrance to the bucolic northern Jerusalem suburb of Har Adar. As we write this, reports say three Israelis were shot to death and a fourth is fighting for his life in a Jerusalem hospital. The gunman is dead. We will report on what we know about this later.

With the fresh extreme violence in mind, what do the data tell us? What do Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion, reveal about support for murder of this kind and about the other issues that are on the minds of the people who play such an influential/complicated role on the lives lived by us Israelis?

As we have said here before, what the Palestinian Arabs think is something we're very interested in knowing. Relying on newspapers or electronic media coverage of their views, a person is likely to get someone's wishful projections or politically-skewed understandings rather than data-based analysis. The difference between the two is vast and unbridgeable.

There are some serious polling organizations that are themselves Palestinian Arab. We tend to focus on the findings of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research or PSR [website] headed by the respected Prof. Khalil Shikaki. We're doing that again now.

In PSR's Poll Number 65 (there have been three on which we did not manage to report since our last related post), which was published on September 19, 2017, we think these are the key findings (italicized texts are taken verbatim from the source)

A syndicated AFP photo shows the supporters of Fatah and of Abbas in the
Gaza Strip last week. There may be more out of camera range. [Image Source]

• Violence: 35% of those polled "think that the most effective means of creating a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel is armed action". Negotiation gets 33% and "popular non-violent resistance" 26%. In the December  2016 poll, armed action got slightly more: 37%. A year ago, it got 34%. Those slight rises and falls are less significant than the reality that a third of the Arabs living closest to us see the best solution to the differences between as being achieved by murder and terror. A third. But it gets worse...
• Non-violence? Now bear in mind that "popular non-violent resistance" is an expression that means something quite different for the Palestinian Arabs and their advocates - including their president - than for most other people. Abbas and people around him use it to refer to lethal measures like hurling rocks at Israelis and their vehicles: non-violent resistance in  their lexicon includes rock hurling, knifings and vehicle-rammings. That's plainly terrorist violence, whatever advocates for the Palestinian Arabs claim, and it means that nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian Arabs are for it. 
• An "overwhelming majority" are "worried about the future of liberties in Palestine". Contributing factors, over and above the decades of heavy-handed, thuggish rule by a self-preserving clique of aging Abbas/Arafat regime kleptocrats (our observation, not PSR's) include a marked rise in PA arrests of reporters and "activists"; a new presidential decree enacting an oppressive piece of regulation that they call a "cybercrime law"; and upcoming changes to the PA's Law of the Judiciary. 
• Related to the first point: A large majority of Palestinian Arabs (85% of West Bank Arabs) now say they are afraid to criticize their PA masters. Fully half of them believe Abbas' PA has become "a burden on the Palestinian people". 
• This is evidently affecting their political outlooks. If presidential elections were held today, the Hamas candidate "Haniyeh would win against Abbas. Findings also indicate a decline in support for Fatah, particularly in the Gaza Strip where Hamas is more popular. In the West Bank however, Fatah remains more popular than Hamas." Just 3 months ago, PSR found that each candidate had the same level of support if this were a two-horse race. No longer. 
• But even before they get to elections, there's no doubting the appetite for immediate political change: "67% of the public want president Abbas to resign... Three months ago, 62% said [this]... Demand for Abbas’ resignation stands at 60% in the West Bank and 80% in the Gaza Strip."
• Gaza is one big set of problems for Fatah and its leader: "It is certain that [Mahmoud Abbas, president-for-life of the PA] would lose any presidential elections in the Gaza Strip to Hamas’ Ismael Haniyeh". 
• Worth recalling that the last time Palestinian Arabs were given the chance to vote for a president was in January 2005 when Abbas won; he has held tenaciously on to power ever since. The only previous presidential election, dominated by Yasser Arafat, was in 1996.
• For the rather touchy Abbas and his hangers-on, there's more bad news and it involves Abbas' fiercest rival: "Fatah is fast losing its popularity in the Gaza Strip, standing at 28% today compared to 40% only nine months ago. Those who still support Fatah in the Gaza Strip are shifting loyalty to Mohammad Dahlan whose popularity among Gazans has more than doubled during the past nine months, from 9% to 23% today, while his popularity among West Bankers did not change, remaining hardly at 1%."
• In a three-way race, the convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti who lives in an Israeli prison cell, would easily beat both Abbas and Haniyah.
• Support for violence against Israelis has risen over the previous poll, "despite the fact that a majority remains opposed to it", partly because of "the lack of trust in diplomacy. Findings show that about three quarters believe that the Trump Administration is not serious about Palestinian-Israeli peace making and an even higher percentage believes that the Administration is not an honest broker and that it is biased in favor of Israel".
• When they watch television, here's where they tune in: Al Jazeera (Qatar-owned, Qatar-based) 20%; Ma'an TV 14%; Hamas' Al Aqsa TV 13%; Palestine TV (controlled by the PA) 12%; Filasteen al Youm/Palestine Today 11%; Al Arabiya (Saudi-owned, Dubai-based) 6; Hamas' Al Quds TV 4%; al Mayadeen (satellite-news station based in Beirut) 3%.
• The popular perception of corruption in the PA and its institutions is now at 77%. This is actually something of an improvement; in a 2014 PCR poll, it stood at 81%.
• On the list of "Most vital Palestinian goals and problems", the top item with 40% support is the need "to end Israeli occupation". A mere 12% think the "first and most vital goal should be to establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights". The most serious problem confronting their society today is poverty and unemployment (26%) with "the spread of corruption in public institutions" second at 25%.
• The violent confrontations that took place on Jerusalem's Temple Mount in July 2017 in the wake of the brazen and cold-blooded killing of two Israeli Druze security men [see our post] occupied much of the thinking of the Palestinian Arab public. In PSR's words and despite those other concerns we just listed, the "the installment of metal detectors at the entrance to al Haram al Sharif gates were the most important event during the period in question". 
• As for Israel's decision to quickly remove them, a minuscule 7% of Palestinian Arabs attribute this to King Abdullah II of Jordan despite Jordan's not-so-subtle PR efforts to grab the limelight, as in this Arab media quote: “Without the Hashemite custodi­anship and the steadfastness of the Jerusalemites, the holy sites would have been lost many years ago.” (Those of us old enough to remember life in Jerusalem pre-1967 recall how the Old City of Jerusalem was under illegal Jordanian military occupation from 1949 until freed in the Six Day War.)

There's not much here to feel good about. As their own societies - both Fatah and Hamas - explore new kinds of tyranny, between one-third and two-thirds of them hold tight to a vision of more violence as a solution to their problems. The future of their children, meanwhile, along with their health, their schools, their environment and their economy remain mired in self-inflicted gloom, failure and inertia.

PSR 65 was based on a sample size of 1,270 adults interviewed face-to-face (not by phone) in 127 locations selected randomly. The statistical margin of error is 3%.