Shin Bet: Palestinian who stabbed Israeli 'sought vengeance for killing of PFLP member'

Suspect arrested by police for attack at Geha Interchange near Petah Tikva; victim still hospitalized with moderate wounds.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Knife (illustrative) 370 (photo credit: Knife)
Knife (illustrative) 370
(photo credit: Knife)
The 28-year-old from the Ramallah area who stabbed an Israeli at the Geha junction near Petah Tikva this week has confessed to the attack, and reenacted it, the Shin Bet said on Tuesday.
Fadi al-Huda, originally from Nablus, and currently a resident of Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, was arrested hours after an Israeli was stabbed and moderately wounded at the junction on Sunday. The victim is recovering at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva.
Huda is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and has in the past been active on behalf of Islamic Jihad. He served time in an Israeli prison for attacking soldiers and plotting a suicide bombing within the Green Line.
Huda said he sought revenge for the death of 24-year-old Muataz Washaha, a local PFLP member who security forces suspect of plotting terrorist attacks in the West Bank.
The Border Police’s elite counterterrorism unit killed Washaha during a raid by on his Bir Zeit hideout on February 27, after he failed to comply with orders to surrender.
According to the Shin Bet, Huda reached the capital on Sunday by walking down dirt paths on Mount Scopus, and then took a taxi to the Geha junction.
“This terrorist attack demonstrates, once again, the danger posed by the presence of Palestinians in Israel illegally, and the need to seal gaps in the security fence, which are exploited to enter Israel,” the Shin Bet said.
“This incident joins others in recent months in which Palestinians in Israel illegally were involved in terrorist attacks, such as the December 2013 planting of a bomb on a bus in [Bat Yam], the kidnapping and murder of the soldier Tomer Hazan in September 2013, and the murder of the soldier Eden Atias in Afula in November 2013,” it said.


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