A PALESTINIAN was shot dead after driving a truck into a group of uniformed Israeli soldiers, killing four soldiers and injuring at least 13 other people last Saturday afternoon, at a bus stop in the illegal Israeli settlement of East Talpiyyot in occupied East Jerusalem.
An Israeli police spokesperson confirmed in a statement that the ‘terrorist’ was shot and killed after carrying out what she called a deliberate attack. Sources identified the slain driver as 28-year-old Fadi Ahmad Hamdan al-Qunbar from the nearby East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Jabal al-Mukabbir.
Israel’s emergency medical service Magen David Adom (MDA) said that the slain Israeli soldiers were in their 20s. According to Israeli media, three were women and the fourth was a man. MDA added that 13 others were wounded – three severely, one moderately to severely, and nine lightly. They were all evacuated to Israel’s Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem. It remained unconfirmed if any civilians were among the injured.
Israeli police said a truck with Israeli license plates veered from its course and rammed into people getting off of a bus – later revealed to be a group of uniformed Israeli soldiers – at a promenade in the settlement, which overlooks the Old City of East Jerusalem.
A number of people were initially trapped under the truck, and three of the wounded had to be extracted from under the truck using a crane. Israeli police reported imposing heightened security measures in the Jerusalem area, and that investigations were ongoing. Israeli police chief Roni Alsheich told reporters that there was no advance warning for the attack.
Israeli police later announced a gag-order for Israeli media on all further details of the case, including the identities of suspects. The illegal East Talpiyyot settlement is also known as Armon Hanatziv, and is located just west of Jabal al-Mukabbir. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov condemned the attack, saying it was ‘reprehensible that some choose to glorify such acts which undermine the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis. There is nothing heroic in such actions.
‘I urge all to condemn violence and incitement, maintain calm and to do everything they can to avoid further escalation,’ Mladenov added. Meanwhile, the Hamas movement released a statement in Arabic on social media, in which it hailed the ‘heroic and brave truck attack in Jerusalem which comes as natural reaction to the Israeli occupation’s crimes.’
Since a wave of unrest began in October 2015 – largely marked by small-scale attacks by Palestinians targeting uniformed Israeli soldiers and police with knives or similar weapons – a number of deliberate car ramming attacks have occurred. However, Israeli authorities’ version of events have been challenged in a number of incidents, with officials in some cases later admitting so-called ‘terror attacks’ were actually traffic accidents.
However, Israeli news site Ynet quoted a witness as saying that after the truck rammed into the group of soldiers, Israeli forces fired at the driver who then reversed the truck and ran over the soldiers again. A video later released on Israeli media purported to show the moment the truck rammed into the soldiers.
• Israeli forces delivered stop-work orders and demolition orders to Palestinian owners of three homes in the town of Burqin west of Salfit in the central occupied West Bank on Sunday, under the pretext that the structures did not have Israeli-issued building permits.
Local sources said that the homes were located in Area C – the more than 60 per cent of the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control – along an Israeli bypass road connecting illegal Israeli settlements located just west of Burqin: Peduel, Ale Zahav, and Leshem, which was recently recognised by the Israeli government as a settlement unto itself after first being established as a ‘neighbourhood’ of the Ariel settlement block.
Salfit-area researcher Khalid Maali said that as of Sunday, some 22 demolition orders had been delivered to Palestinian homes in the Salfit area over the past five days alone. He did not specify how many of the three warrants delivered on Sunday were for demolitions, and how many were stop-work orders.
A spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli agency responsible for implementing Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territory, was unavailable for immediate comment on the incident. Nearly all Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the Israeli authorities, forcing communities to build illegally, and placing them under the constant risk of demolitions at the hands of Israeli forces.
Meanwhile. the estimated 550,000 Jewish Israeli settlers in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem are more easily given building permits and allowed to expand their homes and properties. Demolitions in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem saw an unprecedented surge in 2016, as Israeli authorities had demolished 1,081 Palestinian structures as of Dec. 26 according to UN documentation, more than doubling the number of demolitions since 2015, when 531 Palestinian structures were demolished.
Last month, the extreme right-wing Regavim movement reportedly filed a petition to Israel’s Supreme Court against the Israeli Defence Ministry and the Civil Administration for ‘neglecting for a decade to demolish an illegal Arab building which is on state land within the administrative borders of the town of Leshem.’
In May 2016, after repeated instances of settlers levelling Palestinian lands in the area to prepare for infrastructure to build hundreds of settlement units in Leshem, a COGAT spokesperson said the levelling activities were part of ‘a master plan in effect on state lands and the work there is legal.’
At the time, Maali said that such levelling works were being carried on a near-daily basis in order to expand 24 settlements in the area. A recent report by Israeli rights group B’Tselem argued that under the guise of a ‘temporary military occupation,’ Israel has been ‘using the land as its own: robbing land, exploiting the area’s natural resources for its own benefit and establishing permanent settlements,’ estimating that Israel had dispossessed Palestinians from some 200,000 hectares (494,211 acres) of lands in the occupied Palestinian territory over the years.
B’Tselem highlighted the ‘key role’ of Israeli settlers in further isolating Palestinians from their lands, either through the establishment of outposts officially unrecognised by the Israeli government, or through the regular use of violence or threats of violence against Palestinians.
The movement of Israeli settlers taking over Palestinian land, and further displacing the local Palestinian population has been Israeli policy since the takeover of the West Bank and Jerusalem in 1967, B’Tselem said, underscoring that all ‘Israeli legislative, legal, planning, funding, and defence bodies’ have played an active role in the dispossession of Palestinians from their lands, despite the international community pinpointing settlements as one of the major obstacles to peace.
• Hanna Issa, member of Fatah revolutionary council on Sunday said moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will ignite a religious war in the region. In an interview with Mawtni radio station, Issa said Palestinians can’t predict the reaction to moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Since 1974, US foreign policy decreed East Jerusalem as an occupied territory that must not undergo any change by the Israeli occupation.’
This comes after US President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the focus of Palestinian-Israeli tension and the eternal capital for both sides. The move is expected to inflame the situation as Palestinians insist that East Jerusalem would have to be the capital of a sovereign State of Palestine if any two-state solution is reached, while Jerusalem already serves as the government seat and Israel’s declared ‘undivided capital’.
The US embassy has been located in Tel Aviv since the 1960s and to move it to Jerusalem would contradict a steady US policy regarding the final status of Jerusalem; which should be determined in peace talks. Issa, along with many top Palestinian politicians, condemned Trump’s statement saying the move will have unexpected outcome and impact on the situation.
Palestine Liberation Organisation Secretary General Saeb Erekat said moving the embassy to Jerusalem will end the peace process. Outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry told media ‘You’d have an explosion – an absolute explosion in the region, not just in the West Bank and perhaps even in Israel itself, but throughout the region.’