MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / February 10, 2023
A child among two dead after suspected Palestinian drives into Israeli crowd and is later shot dead.
Two Israelis, including a child, were killed and at least five others wounded in a suspected car-ramming in an occupied East Jerusalem Jewish settlement on Friday.
A vehicle drove into pedestrians at a bus stop in the Ramot Alon settlement north of Jerusalem, hitting several people. The driver was then shot dead by an off-duty officer at the scene, Israeli police said.
He was identified as a 31-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem with Israeli citizenship, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israel’s ambulance service Magen David Adom initially said six people were wounded, two of them in a critical condition. A six-year-old child and a 20-year-old were later pronounced dead.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incident as a “terrorist attack” in a statement and said the driver’s home will be sealed off and demolished. He also ordered the reinforcement of security forces in the city.
Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the scene shortly after the incident, along with Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.
The far-right minister said he ordered police to set up checkpoints throughout Issawiya, where the driver is believed to come from, and wanted to put the East Jerusalem neighbourhood under full lockdown.
He added that these measures were not enough and that he wanted to push the death penalty on Palestinian accused of carrying out attacks.
Last month, a Palestinian man opened fire at Israelis at a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, killing seven people. Another shooting took place in Silwan a day later, leaving two Israelis wounded.
The suspected car-ramming comes amid increasing Israeli violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since last year.
Israeli forces have killed 43 Palestinians since the start of January, seven of them this week – a rate of more than one fatality per day since 1 January.
At least 220 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in 2022, while 30 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.
CIA director William Burns warned last week that current tensions bear an “unhappy resemblance” to the Second Intifada.
He added that the CIA is working with Israeli and Palestinian security services to prevent “explosions of violence”, but admitted that it’s “going to be a big challenge”.
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Car ramming kills two people in occupied East Jerusalem
Al-Jazeera / February 10, 2023
Driver rams a car into a crowded bus stop in illegal Jewish settlement of Ramot before being shot and killed.
A Palestinian has rammed a car into a crowded bus stop in occupied East Jerusalem, killing two people, including a child, before being shot and killed, Israeli police and medics say.
The car ramming on Friday took place in the illegal Jewish settlement of Ramot, Tensions have soared in the eastern half of the city after a Palestinian carried out a shooting outside a synagogue on January 27, which killed seven people in the deadliest attack in Jerusalem in more than a decade.
The Israeli rescue service identified the two people killed on Friday as a six-year-old boy and a man in his 20s. It said medics were treating five injured, including an eight-year-old in critical condition after undergoing CPR. The others ranged in age from 10 to 40 and were in moderate to serious condition.
“It was a shocking scene,” said paramedic Lishai Shemesh, who happened to be driving by at the time of the attack. “I was in the car with my wife and children and noticed a car driving fast into the bus stop and crushing the people who were waiting there.”
Police said an off-duty detective shot and killed the suspect at the scene. There was no immediate word on his identity.
Footage showed police and paramedics swarming a mangled blue Mazda that had slammed into the bus stop. Bloody bodies lay strewn around the scene.
Suspect’s house to be demolished
The Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, praised the attack but did not claim responsibility for it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incident as a “terrorist” attack and ordered security forces to be reinforced.
The Israeli i24 news website reported that Netanyahu has decided to seal the suspect’s house and demolish it.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly condemned the attack in advance of his visit to the region aimed at easing tensions.
“The deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is repugnant and unconscionable,” Blinken said in a statement.
The Jewish settlement of Ramot was built in 1974 on lands confiscated from the Palestinian villages of Beit Iksa and Beit Hanina.
Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital while the Palestinian Authority seeks East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 June War, as the capital of its future state.
Hostilities have escalated in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank since Israel stepped up raids and Palestinians increased “individual attacks” in Israel last year.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2022, making it the deadliest year in those territories since 2004, according to leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem.
Last year, 30 people were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
So far this year, 43 Palestinians have been killed, according to a count by The Associated Press – 10 of them in a gunfight last month during an army raid in Jenin in the West Bank.
Israel’s new far-right government, led by Netanyahu, had accused the previous government of inaction after a series of Palestinian attacks, raising questions about its stance towards the Palestinians at a time of heightened tension.
SOURCE: AL-JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
