GUSH ETZION, PALESTINE - A Palestinian fatally stabbed an American-born Jewish settler in Palestine on Sunday then was himself shot and seized by armed civilians who gave chase.
Israeli security personnel work at the scene of a stabbing attack near a mall in the Gush Etzion Junction in the occupied West Bank, September 16, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The victim, Ari Fuld, 45, was well-known amongst settlers as a pro-Israel advocate. According to his Twitter account, he had planned a lecture tour in the United States in November.
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Israeli police said the Palestinian who stabbed him in the back at a shopping mall in the Etzion bloc of Jewish settlements south of Jerusalem was shot and wounded by one of several armed civilians - including a bleeding Fuld - who gave chase.
Blood-stained clothes and a bullet hole in a glass panel are seen at the scene of a stabbing attack near a mall in the Gush Etzion Junction in the occupied West Bank, September 16, 2018. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The suspected assailant, identified in Israeli media as a 17-year-old from a Palestinian village, was taken into custody.
Palestinian street attacks against Israelis, many carried out by assailants with no known affiliation to militant groups, have been sporadic since 2015, a year after peace talks collapsed.
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the Hamas militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, called the Palestinian stabbing a “natural response to Israeli crimes against Palestinians”. It did not claim responsibility for the attack.
David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said on Twitter that “America grieves as one of its citizens was brutally murdered by a Palestinian terrorist.”
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Friedman, who raised money for Jewish settlements as a private citizen, said Fuld “represented the best of both countries and will be deeply missed”. Fuld, a father of four, lived in the settlement of Efrat, in the Etzion area.
Most countries view Israeli settlement in Palestine as illegal. Israel disputes this.
A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli security guard to death in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday before being shot dead by a police officer, Israeli officials said.
The stabbing came with concerns over the potential for an upsurge in unrest in the coming weeks as the United States prepares to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The security guard was taken to hospital in serious condition suffering a stab wound to his torso, medics said.
The hospital later announced he had died from his wounds. Israeli media reported that he was in his 30s, with some reports saying he was off-duty at the time.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed the assailant had been shot dead.
Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service identified the assailant as Abdul Rahmani Faddal, 28, and a father of two from Aqraba near Nablus in the north of the occupied West Bank.
The attack comes after a Friday car ramming by a Palestinian near Jenin in the northern West Bankthat the army said killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded two others.
Tensions were high after Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas called for a day of rage on Friday to mark 100 days since US President Donald Trump's controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Palestinians also see the city as their capital and Trump's recognition broke with decades of US policy that Jerusalem's status would be negotiated between the parties.
Palestinian leaders have boycotted Trump's administration over the declaration, though the White House says it still plans to push ahead with its efforts to restart peace talks.
At least 32 Palestinians and four Israelis have been killed since Trump's announcement, which set off major protests.
The United States is planning to open its new embassy in Jerusalem in May to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel's founding.
Palestinians commemorate May 15 as the Nakba, or "catastrophe," marking when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled or were expelled in the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation.
Gaza tensions
There have also been tensions along the border between Gaza and Israel in recent days.
Israel's military said Sunday it had carried out an air raid overnight against an underground Hamas facility in the Gaza Strip and destroyed a separate tunnel under construction that could be used for attacks.
No casualties were reported in either operation, which came after an explosive device was detonated near the Gaza border with Israel, the latest in a string of such incidents.
Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, called Israel's actions an attempt "to scare the people" and head off planned protests along the border beginning later this month.
Israel "bears all the consequences of the escalation," Hamas spokesman Fawzy Barhoum said.
Beginning on March 30, Gazans are planning to erect hundreds of tents near the Israeli border in a six-week show of support for Palestinian refugees.
Two explosive devices were detonated Thursday along the border, which had already provoked Israeli attacks on Hamas positions.
Also on February 17, four Israeli soldiers were wounded by an improvised explosive device on the border, sparking intense military retaliation.
It was not clear who was behind the blasts, but Israel held Hamas responsible as the de facto power in the Palestinian enclave.
Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008. The strip has been under an Israeli blockade for around a decade.
JERUSALEM - A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli security guard at Jerusalem’s main bus station on Sunday, police said, and violence flared near the U.S. Embassy in Beirut over U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Four days of street protests in the Palestinian territories over Trump’s announcement on Wednesday have largely died down, but his overturning of long-standing U.S. policy on Jerusalem -- a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians -- drew more Arab warnings of potential damage to prospects for Middle East peace.
“Our hope is that everything is calming down and that we are returning to a path of normal life without riots and without violence,” Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Army Radio.
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But in Jerusalem, a security guard was in critical condition after a 24-year-old Palestinian man from the occupied West Bank stabbed him after approaching a metal detector at an entrance to the city’s central bus station, police said. The alleged assailant was taken into custody after a passer-by tackled him.
In public remarks on Sunday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a frequent critic of Israel, called it an “invader state” and a “terror state”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who spoke at a news conference in Paris alongside French President Emmanuel Macron after the two leaders met, fired back:
“I‘m not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people,” Netanyahu said.
Macron told Netanyahu that he needed to make gestures to the Palestinians to break the impasse between the two sides.
“I asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to make some courageous gestures towards the Palestinians to get out of the current impasse,” Macron said, suggesting that a freeze of construction in settlements could be a first step.
Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in a 1967 war, to be occupied territory and say the status of the city should be decided at future Israeli-Palestinian talks. Israel says that all of Jerusalem is its capital, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.
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The Trump administration has said it is still committed to reviving Palestinian-Israeli talks that collapsed in 2014, but jettisoning old policies is necessary to break the deadlock.
Washington says it has not taken a position on Jerusalem’s final status or borders, but it is sensible to recognize that any future peace deal will have Israel’s capital in the city.
The United States was “as committed to the peace process as we’ve ever been”, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday. Trump “didn’t talk about boundaries, he didn’t talk about borders... Because the final status of Jerusalem is between the Palestinians and the Israelis. It’s not for the Americans to decide.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will not meet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during his visit to the region, Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki said on Saturday. The White House said on Sunday that decision was unfortunate and Pence looked forward to seeing Netanyahu and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
“It’s unfortunate that the Palestinian Authority is walking away again from an opportunity to discuss the future of the region,” said Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for Pence.
A Palestinian kicks a burning tire during clashes with Israeli troops at a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah December 10, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman
Netanyahu reacted to critics in a statement before talks with Macron, to be followed by a meeting with European foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.
“I hear (from Europe) voices of condemnation over President Trump’s historic announcement, but I have not heard any condemnation for the rocket firing against Israel that has come (after the announcement) and the awful incitement against us,” Netanyahu said.
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In Beirut, Lebanese security forces fired tear gas and water cannons at protesters, some of them waving Palestinian flags, near the U.S. Embassy.
Demonstrators set fires in the street, torched U.S. and Israeli flags and threw projectiles towards security forces that had barricaded the main road to the complex.
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In the Moroccan capital, Rabat, tens of thousands of protesters marched down the city’s main thoroughfare chanting slogans including, “The people want to liberate Palestine” and “Death to Israel, enemy of the people and provoker of wars.”
Waving Palestinian flags and holding up pictures of Jerusalem, they expressed anger at the “betrayal” by Arab governments perceived to have backed Trump’s move.
In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, thousands protested outside the U.S. embassy, many waving banners saying “Palestine is in our hearts”.
Maliki has said the Palestinians will be looking for a new peace talks broker instead of the United States and would seek a United Nations Security Council resolution over Trump’s decision.
Arab foreign ministers who met in Cairo on Saturday urged the United States to abandon its decision on Jerusalem and said the move would spur violence throughout the region.
Echoing that view, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the de facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, said the U.S. move “could throw a lifebuoy to terrorist and armed groups, which have begun to lose ground” in the Middle East.
GAZA TUNNEL
Along Israel’s tense frontier with the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military on Sunday destroyed what it described as a “significant” cross-border attack tunnel dug by the enclave’s dominant Islamist group, Hamas.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas on the demolition, which came as Palestinian factions tried to meet Sunday’s deadline for an Egyptian-mediated handover of Gaza by Hamas to Western-backed President Abbas after a decade’s schism.
Pre-dawn Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Saturday killed two Palestinian gunmen after militants fired rockets from the area into Israel on Friday.
