Israeli killed, three wounded in West Bank car-ramming, stabbing attack

Palestinian Territories: A knife attack by two Palestinian teenagers left an Israeli civilian dead and three others wounded in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Israeli emergency services and the military said.

An army statement said soldiers had eliminated two attackers at the scene and claimed “explosive materials were found in their vehicle”.

The attack took place at the Gush Etzion Junction, a crossroads among a cluster of Israeli settlements on the main road south from Jerusalem to Hebron.

The Israeli military said it responded to a “ramming and stabbing attack”.

Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said in a statement that one man died with a stab wound, and paramedics and an army medical force referred three injured people to two Jerusalem hospitals.

They were a woman in a serious condition, plus a man and a teenage boy both in a moderate condition.

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the man killed was 71.

The Israeli West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, named him as local resident Aharon Cohen.

The Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem said the woman in a serious condition had suffered a gunshot wound to her lower body and was undergoing surgery.

Local media reported that she may have been shot by Israeli security forces targeting the assailants.

The Palestinian Civil Affairs Authority named the attackers as Imran al-Atrash and Walid Sabbarna, two 18-year-olds from the Hebron area, and said that Israeli forces were “holding their bodies”.

Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.

– ‘Pay a very high price’ –

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas hailed the attackers, as did the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.

“The heroic car-ramming and stabbing attack… is a natural response to (Israel’s) attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause and the escalating aggression perpetrated by occupation soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Hamas said in a statement.

The Gush Etzion Junction has been the site of several attacks on Israelis since late 2015.

The Yesha Council, a body representing all Israeli settlements in the West Bank, blamed the assault on the Israeli government’s refusal to annex the Palestinian territory.

Apart from East Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel, more than 500,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank in settlements, alongside some three million Palestinians.

All Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory are considered illegal under international law.

– Situation ‘worrying’ –

Tuesday’s attack came the day after Israeli security forces clashed with demonstrators as they dismantled an illegal Israeli settler outpost in the Gush Etzion area.

On Monday evening, homes and vehicles in the nearby Palestinian village of Jab’a were torched, after which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed he would deal with the violent “handful of extremists” among Israeli settlers.

“We were sitting in our homes when we were surprised by a fire and stones falling on us,” Jab’a resident Mousa Ahmed Mousa told AFP.

“The situation is worrying. The settlers burned down what they burned down, destroyed what they destroyed and then they left.”

Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 1,007 Palestinians — many of them militants, but also scores of civilians — in the West Bank since the start of the war, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.

At least 44 Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli figures.