JERUSALEM (JTA) — Incitement in Palestinian media and schools prompted the recent terrorist attacks on Israeli targets, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
“Terrorist attacks on Israelis in the last few days are a direct result of the incitement & hatred propagated in Palestinian schools & media,” Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev tweeted on Wednesday.
“We are disappointed that so far President Abbas has not condemned these acts of terrorism as one would expect from a partner in peace talks,” Regev said in a second tweet.
Regev’s tweets in English and a similar statement in Hebrew issued by the Prime Minister’s Office came a day after an Israeli Bedouin employee of the Israel Defense Ministry, Salah Abu Latif, 22, was killed by a Palestinian sniper in Gaza as he worked to repair the border fence damaged by the recent winter storms.
Israel’s Air Force and ground troops responded to the killing, targeting several of what the Israel Defense Forces called “terrorist targets” in Gaza. A 3-year-old Palestinian girl reportedly was killed in the retaliatory attacks.
The shooting Tuesday occurred after a series of terrorist incidents in Israel. On Sunday, a bomb exploded on a bus in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, after passengers had been evacuated. On Monday, an Israeli policeman was stabbed in the back in the West Bank. Elsewhere, Border Police guards thwarted a stabbing attack in Jerusalem and a rocket was fired from Gaza into southern Israel, landing near a school bus stop.
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, which comprises several terrorist groups, claimed responsibility for killing Latif. The attack was in retaliation for Israeli “occupation crimes” and the killings of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,” the Popular Resistance Committees said in a statement, according to the Times of Israel.
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