Four Israelis were attacked by Palestinians on Tuesday, in widely separated incidents in Israel. None of the assaults was fatal.
Two of the assailants were captured. One of them was beaten unconscious by infuriated Israelis and died later.
The latest assaults raised to 10 the number of attacks perpetrated by Palestinians on individual Israelis in the past three days.
The new wave of violence began Sunday morning when three Jews were stabbed to death in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem by a young Palestinian from the West Bank who ran amok, shouting, “Slaughter the Jews.”
All of the attacks seemed to be motivated by revenge for the killing of 21 Arabs by Israeli border police during the Temple Mount riots in East Jerusalem on Oct. 8.
The attackers, as far as is known, are all from the administered territories. They appear to have been incited by leaflets circulated last week by the Moslem fundamentalist organization Hamas, which has exhorted Palestinians to now use lethal weapons to kill Jews. In the past, the main weapons of the intifada have been rocks.
Similar leaflets have been circulated by A1 Fatah, the military wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization controlled by Yasir Arafat.
Two of Tuesday’s victims were women soldiers waiting to hitch a ride on the Haifa-Nazareth road. The other two were a carpenter and his customer in Ashkelon, a port city south of Tel Aviv near the Gaza Strip.
The soldiers were standing at a hitchhiking station near Tivon, in the Jezreel Valley, when a Subaru with the blue license plates of the administered territories drew up.
According to eyewitnesses, a burly man in the passenger seat jumped out and quickly stabbed each of the soldiers several times.
One suffered moderate chest wounds and underwent surgery at Rambam Hospital in Haifa. The other was treated for superficial wounds in her back.
REVENGE IS MOTIVE IN ASHKELON
The assailant, identified as a resident of the West Bank town of Jenin was chased by onlookers into a nearby field while the driver of the car sped away. The fleeing driver was being sought.
The attacker was caught and beaten senseless by those who chased him before soldiers extricated him. He died of internal injuries while undergoing surgery at a hospital Tuesday.
In Ashkelon, the local carpenter and his client were attacked with a claw hammer by an Arab worker from the Gaza Strip employed in the carpentry shop.
Both men were hospitalized. The Arab, caught by passersby, told the police he was avenging the death of a friend killed by Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip a year ago.
Sunday’s victims included an unarmed soldier and a police trainee responding to her murder. The assailant’s fourth victim, a teen-age boy, was slightly wounded.
On Monday, an Israeli meatpacker in the Jerusalem suburb of Neveh Ya’acov was stabbed by a young Arab from the West Bank who worked as a delivery man for a Jerusalem supermarket.
The victim was only slightly hurt.
Two Israel Defense Force soldiers were wounded by knife and axe attacks in the Gaza Strip towns of Khan Yunis and Rafah on Sunday and Monday.
A policeman patrolling Independence Park in the center of Jerusalem on Monday night overcame and arrested an Arab who tried to stab him.
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