By Aryeh Savir
JERUSALEM (TNA) – One Israeli was murdered and five were wounded Monday afternoon, August 4, when Muhammad Naif Ja’abis, of the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood in Jerusalem, drove a tractor and rammed it into a bus, turning it over and hitting a pedestrian. He was stopped when a police officer shot him dead. Another police officer was wounded while attempting to stop the terrorist. The bus was fairly empty and so there were fewer casualties.
The attack occurred on Shmuel HaNavi Street, just outside the Olive Tree Hotel.
Yehoshua Altman, a twenty five year-old man, was declared dead at the scene by Magen David Adom (MDA) medics.
“A police officer at the scene stopped his car, got out, neutralized the terrorist and thus prevented a further attack,” the Jerusalem Police Spokesperson’s Office stated shortly after the attack.
Jerusalem has known other such attacks by Arab terrorists. In the summer of 2008, tractors were used to carry out two separate terror attacks in Jerusalem in the space of three weeks. In 2009, a tractor plowed into a police car on Menachem Begin Boulevard in Jerusalem. The driver was apparently also trying to hit a nearby bus, but missed. Two police officers were in the car when it was hit and both sustained mild injuries. Other police officers nearby shot the terrorist. In October 2013, a Palestinian was shot dead after he rammed a tractor through the main gate of an army base located north of Jerusalem.
In other developments, The Fatah claimed responsibility Monday morning for the incident in which two Arabs infiltrated the community of Neve Tsuf, in the Binyamin region north of Jerusalem on Sunday, apparently in a failed attempt to execute a terror attack.
The two entered a home in the afternoon, taking two boys and locking them in a room. They were in search of some sort of weapons, possibly knives in the kitchen, when a third sibling came and chased them away. A woman was lightly wounded in the ensuing struggle.
The attackers escaped and security forces launched extensive searches to apprehend the two. They have not been arrested yet.
Miri Maoz Ovadia, spokeswoman for the Binyamin Regional Council, stated yesterday: “The break-in was into my parents’ house, the Maoz family. Police are looking into the incident but it is important for me that you understand what took place there, based on eyewitness testimony. This event almost turned into a terror attack and miraculously was thwarted,” she said.
It was initially unclear whether the attack had a criminal or nationalistic motive, but the Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades, has claimed responsibility for a failed terror attack. The statement said that the organization’s terror cell confronted “Zionist settlers” and killed three of them before they could safely return to their task.” This claim is false. They further stated that “”this struggle continues until victory or martyrdom in the way of Allah.”
In other developments, the IDF has announced that Operation ‘Protective Edge’ has “moved to the next stage, we are redeploying to enable combat against Hamas and continued defense from tunnels.” There are still skirmishes in Gaza, and Hamas is continuing to fire rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian targets, so in that nothing has changed.
In one incident, forces operating to uncover shafts identified several terrorists emerging from one, and immediately opened fire at the squad that attempted to flee to a nearby house. The force fired at the terrorists, and confirmed a hit. The forces moved on to detonate the tunnel’s route. In another incident, a paratrooper unit identified four terrorists preparing to launch an anti-tank missile from a house in the southern Gaza Strip. Armored corps opened fire at the target; the house collapsed, killing four terrorists. Earlier, Givati Special Forces uncovered more than 150 mortars and a tunnel opening in Rafah, in southern Gaza. The IDF further found motorcycles and weapons in a tunnel inside Israel. Hamas planned to use them to carry out a deadly attack against Israeli civilians and race back into Gaza with hostages. The Islamic Jihad’s northern district commander in the Gaza Strip, Danyal Mansour, was killed in an Israeli strike on a house providing him shelter in the Jabalya refugee camp. Monday morning, IAF fired a missile at a terror operative riding a motorcycle in Rafah; a direct hit confirmed. Since midnight, The IDF struck some 63 terror targets in Gaza.
In the meantime, Israel is looking for a diplomatic solution that will end the operation in a solid fashion. Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nahla, the group’s number-two, said that the issue of disarming the Gaza Strip has not come up in ceasefire talks in Cairo, and that the demand is in any case unacceptable to Palestinian factions in the Strip, a report in the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram stated. Palestinian factions are meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials in an effort to broker a ceasefire to a month of fighting. Israel was set to join the talks multiple times, but in the past week has said that due to Hamas’s violations of multiple ceasefires, Israel would no longer negotiate any agreement with Hamas.
The IDF authorized a humanitarian window to take place in the Gaza Strip from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday in all of Gaza, except for east Rafiah, where heavy fighting continues. However, Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai warned that any violation of the truce will be met with immediate retaliation at the source of the fire.
Gaza terrorists fired 119 rockets at Israel. 108 rockets struck Israel. 8 were intercepted by the Iron Dome defensive system. One rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome over Tel Aviv, and 3 rockets hit open areas in southern Israel. On Sunday, August 3, Palestinian terrorists fired 11 mortars from the vicinity of an UNRWA school in the neighborhood of Zeitoun.
Since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge more than 3,127 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israel. In total, 4,626 terror targets were attacked throughout Operation ‘Protective Edge’.
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Savir is a staff writer for the Tazpit News Agency in Israel