Israeli soldier Maksym Molchanov (20) has been killed and six others injured in an intentional hit-and-run by a Palestinian at the Maccabim checkpoint near the city of Modiin in central Israel this morning. Ten minutes and about 13 kilometers after he fled to return to the West Bank, the Palestinian attacker was killed at a nearby checkpoint when he tried to run over security guards who were already on high alert after being informed of the attack with his truck. This is the fourth in less than 24 hours, aggravating a spiral that is encouraged and applauded by Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
“If we were afraid, we would not leave the house. You have to follow the routine and not give a prize to the terrorists,” an Israeli driver told EL MUNDO, resignedly waiting for the opening of the security control to get to his job in Jerusalem. The wait did not last long on a busy highway that runs from the north of the Holy City to central Israel.
The author of the attack, Daud Abdelrazak Faiz, was 41 years old, lived in the village of Deir Amar (West Bank), with no criminal record and with a work permit in Israel, which allowed him freedom of access and movement. The vehicle, which he used to surprise and run over several off-duty soldiers on the shoulder, killing Molchanov (who emigrated a few years ago from his native Ukraine where his family still lives) and seriously injuring another, had an Israeli license plate and was not it was his. Two Israelis who were in another car and a young Palestinian who sells food in that area were injured when he fled.
“We are not ready to accept terror as a decree of fate and bury our dead every few days due to cruel murderers. There is a great incitement of violence in the Palestinian Authority, in their study books. The highest priority of our Government it is to break terrorism and restore the personal security of citizens”, declared the Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrish, at the scene of the attack after being reminded of his electoral promises in this regard ahead of the elections on November 1. The local media highlight that the worst wave of attacks since the Second Intifada 20 years ago while the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history governs, which came to power eight months ago waving the security flag against the previous government that it had accused of ” weakness” and “not fighting terrorist groups.
On Wednesday night, a 14-year-old Palestinian stabbed and wounded an Israeli youth at a light rail station near the Old City in Jerusalem. Coming from the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina in the eastern part of the city, the teenager carried out the attack and was killed by a Border Police agent who was traveling in said transport. Hours earlier, a Palestinian was wounded and detained after trying to run over several soldiers, one of whom was wounded, at a checkpoint near the Beit Hagai colony, according to the military statement. From this settlement near Hebron, was the Israeli Batsheva Nagari, killed in a Palestinian armed attack nine days ago. “The Army of the occupation and its settlers will continue to pay the price for the crimes of their government of radicals. The resistance will continue and increase until the attacks against our people and our Al Aqsa Mosque cease and until the occupation is driven from our lands,” says Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Like other militias, it has its main West Bank stronghold in Jenin and Nablus in the north of the territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.
Both the armed wing of Hamas and that of Islamic Jihad have today assumed responsibility for the explosion of a bomb last morning at the pass of an Israeli military jeep that was part of the large escort of the visit of more than a thousand religious Jews to the Joseph’s tomb in Nablus. One officer and three soldiers were injured.
“We have managed to attack the Israeli occupation forces in Nablus with powerful explosive charges,” the Palestinian factions announced after the loud explosion. In recent months, each entry of this type, once at the beginning of each month, in the Nablus area provokes riots with Palestinians and on many occasions clashes between Israeli soldiers and militants like this time that ended with a Palestinian wounded by a bullet and another 30 for the launching of tear gas. The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) considers these visits a provocation that aggravates tension and friction and denounces “the violence of settlers in the West Bank” while Israel replies that the visit to pray in the sanctuary is included in the Oslo Accords signed in the 90s.
At virtually the same time as the clashes in Nablus, alarms went off at Ben Gurion Airport. A Palestinian, who had stolen a car, went through the main security checkpoint on the highway to the airport near Tel Aviv. He was arrested in an incident that led the authorities to decree a state of emergency, immediately closing the entrances to the international airport. Several videos on social networks show people lying on the ground in the terminal as security officials requested until they learned the details and ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack.
After the numerous attacks in an escalation that began a year and a half ago, the Israeli Army has 21 battalions in the West Bank, confiscates weapons, tries to stop the massive smuggling of weapons and explosives from the Jordanian border and arrests dozens of Palestinians in almost daily raids that in many times they lead to riots and exchanges of fire with militiamen.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Iran of financing and promoting attacks against its soldiers and citizens through the groups it supports in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in an increasingly close, public and coordinated connection between Tehran, Hezbollah (Lebanon) Hamas and Islamic Jihad. According to security sources, every day they abort one or two significant attacks a day. Everything indicates that the last three (with a knife and vehicles) were carried out by the so-called “lone wolves” and not by direct order of an organized group.
Iran, for its part, has declared this Thursday that it managed to thwart a sophisticated sabotage plan of the “Zionist entity” in the manufacture of advanced missiles. “The Intelligence unit of the Ministry of Defense thwarted one of the largest sabotage plots against Iran’s military missile, aviation and airspace industry,” Iranian state television said, accusing agents of Israel’s intelligence service of trying to introduce defective parts in the manufacturing process of its missiles.
