Angry residents of the East Talpiyot neighborhood of Jerusalem are demanding tough action against surrounding Arab villages, following the murder of a young Israeli man by a knife-wielding Arab.
In the aftermath of the bloody attack Monday, which also left two other Jews wounded, police have bolstered patrols in the neighborhood to maintain control and protect Arabs from revenge attacks by Jews.
The stabbing was the deadliest of a spate of terror incidents that began Sunday, when an Israeli couple driving near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba came under fire from a passing vehicle/They were only slightly injured.
In another incident Monday, a 1-year-old baby was seriously hurt in northern Jerusalem after a car she was riding in with her parents was stoned, apparently by Arabs. The baby underwent surgery after suffering skull fractures.
The attack in East Talpiyot began at about 6:20 a.m., when an Arab man repeatedly stabbed an Israeli woman at a bus stop. The spot lies on the edge of the Jewish neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, near the Arab villages of Jabel Mukaber and Sur Bahir. East Talpiyot resident Moshe Mizrahi heard the woman screaming and rushed to help her. In the ensuing scuffle, Mizrahi was also injured.
The attacker began to flee the scene, ran into Yehezkel Mizrahi, Moshe’s 28-year-old son, and stabbed the young man to death. A bus driver who noticed what was happening fired two shots toward the fleeing attacker, but missed his target.
Police immediately conducted a manhunt for the assailant, who was seen running toward the neighboring Arab villages. Security forces sealed off the Arab villages and directed the search using a helicopter hovering overhead.
Police trackers followed footprints from the site of the attack to the nearby village of Sheikh Sayyid, where two suspects were detained.
The stabbed woman, meanwhile, underwent surgery at Hadassah Hospital and was described as being in fair condition.
ANGRY JEWISH RESIDENTS
Monday’s murder triggered angry reactions from Jewish residents of East Talpiyot, with some demanding that the attacker’s village be leveled and its residents deported.
When Police Inspector-General Ya’acov Terner arrived on the scene, he was greeted with angry shouts demanding tougher action against the neighboring Arab villages.
Meanwhile, the weekend shooting incident in the West Bank was seen as signaling a further deterioration of the security situation in the territories.
Soon after the attack, groups of Jewish residents of Hebron and Kiryat Arba rushed to the scene and began to damage Arab vehicles in revenge.
The tactic of attacking Israeli vehicles from a passing car has been used by Arabs in the Gaza Strip and Hebron areas during recent months, but until now only against military patrols.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
