TIP–Reports began to trickle in Wednesday evening of a Palestinian terror attack against Israeli soldiers in which a car ran into a group of IDF troops, injuring three, less than 12 hours after a similar incident in Jerusalem that saw a Palestinian man drive into a throng of people at a bus stop, killing an Israeli Druze soldier and injuring more than a dozen others.
(Residents of Arzei Habira told JLBC that when they heard the second siren from an ambulance right outside their windows, they knew something bad happened. Then there were more sirens and they learned that an Arab driving a van plowed into a group of people standing not far from Ohr Sameach and other yeshivot where Bergen County bochrim learn.)
The attacks are the second and third of their kind in two weeks–last month an infant was killed and at least eight people were injured when a Palestinian terrorist plowed into a crowd of people waiting at a Jerusalem light rail station. Last week in Jerusalem prominent activist Yehuda Glick was shot in the chest by a Palestinian terrorist, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Palestinian incitement would lead to disaster.
Recent months have seen Israeli-Arab friction steadily increasing in and around Jerusalem, as top Palestinian leaders–up to and including PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah–claimed Israel was seeking to desecrate and destroy Muslim holy sites on the city’s Temple Mount. Following Glick’s shooting, Abbas sent a letter to the family of the would-be assassin, calling the terrorist a “martyr” and Israeli troops “terrorist gangs.”
Abbas has for weeks been criticized by American and Israeli leaders for inflammatory remarks–State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Tuesday told reporters at the daily briefing that the standard “to exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric, and make clear that violence is unacceptable” was “was not met at all” by Abbas’s letter. Israeli
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman last month accused Abbas of “ramp[ing] up incitement against Israel and the Jews” and of “call[ing] for a religious war.” Hours after Wednesday morning’s attack in Jerusalem, Netanyahu blasted Abbas for continued incitement, which Netanyahu, speaking at a memorial ceremony for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, said was “directly responsible” for the most recent wave of violence in Jerusalem.
