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Four Killed In Jerusalem Truck Attack

Four Killed In Jerusalem Truck Attack

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four people and injuring about 15 others in a deliberate attack, police and emergency services said.

Police identified the driver as a Palestinian from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and said he was shot dead. A dozen bullet holes pockmarked the windscreen.

It was the deadliest Palestinian attack in Jerusalem in months and targeted officer cadets who were disembarking from a bus that brought them to the Armon Hanatziv promenade, a stone-laden and grass-lined walkway with a panoramic view of the walled Old City.

“It is a terrorist attack, a ramming attack,” a police spokeswoman said.

Police said the dead, three women and one man, were all in their twenties, without identifying them further. Soldiers’ deaths are announced in Israel only after families are notified.

Roni Alsheich, the national police chief, told reporters he could not rule out that the Palestinian was motivated by a truck ramming attack in a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people last month.

“It is certainly possible to be influenced by watching TV but it is difficult to get into the head of every individual to determine what prompted him, but there is no doubt that these things do have an effect,” Alsheich told reporters.

A wave of Palestinian street attacks, including vehicle rammings, has largely slowed but not stopped completely since it began in October 2015.

Security camera footage showed the truck racing towards the soldiers, and then after a gap that apparently included scenes of carnage, reversing into them.

“In a split second I looked to my left and saw what I can only describe as a speeding truck which sent me flying,” a security guard, who was identified only as “A” told Channel 10.

“It was a miracle that my pistol stayed on me. I shot at a tire but realized there was no point as he has many wheels, so I ran in front of the cabin and at an angle I shot at him and emptied my magazine. When I finished shooting, some of the officer cadets also took aim and also started firing.”

The footage showed many of the soldiers fleeing the scene as the attack took place, their rifles slung on their shoulders. Questions were already being raised in the Israeli media why more did not engage the attacker.

Rescue workers said about 15 wounded people were strewn on the street at the promenade as ambulances raced to the scene. The Israeli military regularly takes soldiers on educational tours of Jerusalem, including the Armon Hanatziv vantage point.

Channel 10 television said the soldiers’ tour guide also fired at the assailant.

As a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its capital but the world does not, the truck driver would carry an Israeli identity card and be able to move freely through all of the city.

Palestinian street assaults over the past 15 months have killed at least 37 Israelis and two visiting Americans.

At least 231 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip during that period. Israel says at least 157 of them were assailants in lone attacks often targeting security forces and using rudimentary weapons including kitchen knives. Others died during clashes and protests.

Israel says one of the main causes of the violence has been incitement by the Palestinian leadership, with young men encouraged to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies that allegation, and says assailants have acted out of frustration over Israeli occupation of land Palestinians seek for a state in peace talks stalled since 2014.

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza praised Sunday’s attack.

“We bless this heroic operation resisting the Israeli occupation to force it to stop its crimes and violations against our people,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Maayan Lubell, Ori Lewis and Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Stephen Powell)

IMAGE: Israeli soldiers work at the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Trump Tells Netanyahu He Would Recognize Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital

Trump Tells Netanyahu He Would Recognize Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital

By Alana Wise

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Sunday told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if elected, he would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the campaign said, marking a potential dramatic shift in U.S. policy.

During the meeting that lasted more than an hour at Trump Tower in New York, Trump told Netanyahu that under his administration, the United States would “recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.”

While Israel calls Jerusalem its capital, few other countries accept that, including the United States. Most nations maintain embassies in Tel Aviv.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in a 1967 war, as capital of the state they aim to establish alongside Israel in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu held a separate meeting later on Sunday that lasted just under an hour with Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the Nov. 8 U.S. election.

Clinton emphasized her commitment to the U.S.-Israel relationship and her plan to take the relationship to the next level, according to a statement from her campaign.

She also talked about her commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict “that guarantees Israel’s future as a secure and democratic Jewish state with recognized borders and provides the Palestinians with independence, sovereignty, and dignity,” according to the statement.

“Secretary Clinton reaffirmed her opposition to any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including by the U.N. Security Council,” the statement said.

During the meeting with Trump, the Republican candidate’s campaign said he agreed with Netanyahu that peace in the Middle East could only be achieved when “the Palestinians renounce hatred and violence and accept Israel as a Jewish State.”

The Trump campaign said he and Netanyahu discussed “at length” Israel’s border fence, cited by Trump in reference to his own controversial immigration policies, which include building a wall on the U.S.- Mexico border and temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country.

Other regional issues, including the fight against Islamic State, U.S. military assistance to Israel – “an excellent investment” – and the Iran nuclear deal, which both parties have criticized, were also discussed.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Conlin in New York and Caren Bohan in Washington; Editing by Bill Trott and Sandra Maler)

IMAGE: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departs after meeting with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York, U.S. September 25, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

U.S. ‘Excessive Force’ Comment Touches Nerve In Israel

U.S. ‘Excessive Force’ Comment Touches Nerve In Israel

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) — Israel bristled on Thursday at U.S. suggestions it may have used excessive force to confront Palestinian stabbings, and also published hospital images it said refuted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s allegation a teen suspect had been “executed”.>

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon accused Washington of “misreading” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying shooting knife-wielding Palestinians was self-defense. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan called the U.S. remarks “foolish”.

With U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry due to travel to the Middle East soon to try to calm the violence, Israeli officials said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly ordered cabinet ministers to say no more publicly about the latest acrimony in a long-troubled relationship with the Obama administration.

Thirty-two Palestinians and seven Israelis have been killed in the past two weeks of bloodshed. The Palestinian dead include 10 knife-wielding assailants, police said, as well as children and protesters shot in violent demonstrations.

The violence has been triggered in part by Palestinians’ anger over what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound, which is Islam’s holiest site outside Saudi Arabia and is also revered by Jews as the location of two destroyed biblical Jewish temples.

At a daily press briefing on Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Israel, which has set up roadblocks in Palestinian neighborhoods of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem to try to stem attacks, has a right and responsibility to protect its citizens.

He added: “Now, we have seen some – I wouldn’t call the checkpoints this – but we’ve certainly seen some reports of what many would consider excessive use of force.

“Obviously, we don’t like to see that, and we want to see restrictions that are elevated in this time of violence to be as temporary as possible if they have to be enacted,” Kirby said, without citing specific incidents.

Asked on Army Radio about the remarks, Yaalon said: “Are we exercising excessive force? If someone wields a knife and they kill him, is that excessive force? What are we talking about?”

PALESTINIAN ALLEGATIONS

Kirby’s comments touched a nerve in Israel, especially after allegations by Abbas, in a televised speech in Arabic on Wednesday, that Israeli forces were “executing our sons in cold blood, as they did with this child, Ahmed Manasra, and other children in Jerusalem and other places in Palestine”.

Many Palestinians were incensed by amateur video that had shown Manasra, 13, lying on the street in Pisgat Zeev, a Jewish settlement on the northern edge of Jerusalem, with blood coming from his head. Israeli police said that he and a cousin stabbed two Israelis there on Monday.

The 15-year-old cousin was shot dead, and Israel said that day that Manasra was alive and taken to hospital after being hit by a car during the attack. On Thursday, after Abbas’s address, Israel’s Government Press Office released a video, without sound, showing a youth it identified as Manasra being spoon-fed in a bed in Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital. A doctor said he could be discharged soon.

Hours after the Israeli roadblocks went up on Wednesday, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded a 70-year-old woman outside Jerusalem’s central bus station before a police officer shot him dead.

Palestinian officials describe the roadblocks as collective punishment.

Prior to the bus station incident, another Palestinian was shot dead after he attempted to stab paramilitary police at an entrance to Jerusalem’s walled Old City, police said.

Israel has deployed 300 soldiers in Jerusalem and throughout the country to try to stop the most serious eruption of Palestinian street attacks since an uprising in 2000-2005.

Many Palestinians are frustrated with the failure of years of peace diplomacy meant to bring them statehood and end Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

The powerful Islamist group Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction, has been vocal in supporting the current attacks, and it called for “rallies of anger and confrontations” to be held in West Bank cities after Friday Muslim prayers.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Ori Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Photo: Thirteen-year-old Ahmed Manasra, a Palestinian from Beit Hanina in northern Jerusalem, sits in his hospital bed at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, in this handout picture released from the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) October 15, 2015. REUTERS/GPO/Handout via Reuters

Israeli-Palestinian Violence Intensifies; Arabs And Jews Stabbed

Israeli-Palestinian Violence Intensifies; Arabs And Jews Stabbed

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) — A Jewish man stabbed and wounded four Arabs in southern Israel on Friday in an apparent reprisal attack for Palestinian violence during the worst spell of civil unrest in the region for several years.

In the past 10 days, four Israelis have been shot or stabbed to death in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, and at least a dozen have been wounded by Palestinians wielding knives or screwdrivers in stabbings in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities.

Three Palestinians have also been killed, and scores wounded in clashes with Israeli security forces during stone-throwing demonstrations in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank, leading to talk of a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada.

Palestinian anger is largely focused on events at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City and fears that Israel is trying to change the status quo at the holy site, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied wanting to change conditions under which Jews are allowed to visit the site but bans non-Muslim prayer, but his assurances have done little to quell Palestinian anger.

Both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have called for calm and Palestinian police are continuing to coordinate with Israeli security forces to try to restore order, but there are few signs of the tension and violence dying down.

Palestinian protests were planned in Jerusalem and West Bank cities after Muslim prayers on Friday, and Israel has deployed thousands more police and soldiers. Muslim access to al-Aqsa has been restricted to men over 45 and women.

In the latest attack, a Jewish man in his 20s stabbed four Arab men in the southern Israeli city of Dimona, police said, adding that the motive was “nationalistic”.

The mayor of Dimona said the assailant was a resident of the city who was known to police. During questioning, police said the attacker described all Arabs as “terrorists”.

Hours later, a 14-year-old Jewish boy was stabbed and wounded by a Palestinian in the Old City of Jerusalem, a woman believed to be Palestinian tried to stab a guard at a bus station in north Israel, and a Palestinian stabbed a policeman near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Israeli police said.

The policeman’s attacker was shot dead, police said.

On Thursday, seven Israelis were stabbed in four separate incidents across the country, including the commercial capital Tel Aviv, fuelling concerns about a wider uprising following those of the late 1980s and early 2000s.

The violence now is on a much smaller scale than then but mistrust between Israel and the Palestinians is deep after their last negotiations ended in April 2014 without progress.

A new intifada would further complicate efforts by world leaders to resolve conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and there is little appetite to re-engage in peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians after many failures in the past.

The chances of peace talks resuming before U.S. President Barack Obama’s term ends appear slim.

NO PEACE, NO TALKS

Netanyahu has accused Abbas, his Fatah party and the Islamist group Hamas of inciting the violence in East Jerusalem in recent weeks. He reiterated that message at a news conference on Thursday, adding that there was no “quick fix”.

“We are in the midst of a wave of terrorism with knives, firebombs, rocks and even live fire,” he said.

“While these acts are mostly unorganized, they are all the result of wild and mendacious incitement by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, several countries in the region and… the Islamic Movement in Israel.”

Abbas has praised Palestinians for defending al-Aqsa, a rallying point for Muslims throughout the region, but also urged people to engage in “peaceful popular resistance”. The leader of Hamas in Gaza urged Palestinians to step up attacks.

“We gives souls and blood for Jerusalem, Jerusalem and Aqsa is part of the religion,” Ismail Haniyeh said at Friday prayers.

“We call for escalating and deepening the intifada… We are proud of you, the heroes of knives.”

Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians holding a rally near Gaza’s border fence with Israel on Friday, wounding 12 people, medics in Gaza said.

As well as tensions over al-Aqsa, Palestinian anger has mounted as Israeli forces took a tougher line against protesters who are violent. Netanyahu has told troops and police they can shoot Palestinian stone-throwers if they have reason to believe an Israeli life is threatened.

There is also frustration at the failure of Israeli police to track down the Jewish perpetrators suspected of an arson attack on a Palestinian family in the West Bank two months ago in which a child and his parents were killed.

In turn, Israelis are on edge after deadly stone-throwing attacks by Palestinians and the killing of an Israeli couple in the West Bank 10 days ago. They were shot as they drove in their car with their four children.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Photo: Palestinian men take part in Friday prayers outside the Old City as Israeli policemen patrol nearby in Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud, Oct. 9, 2015. REUTERS/Ammar Awad