Archive: Palestinian tries stabbing soldier

By ERIK SCHECHTER
A 16-year-old Palestinian tried to stab a Border Police officer Monday at the entrance to the IDF District Coordination Office in Jenin. The attacker set off a metal detector and as the officer approached him to do a body search, the Palestinian brandished a knife and attempted to kill the officer. The teenager was wrestled to the ground and taken for interrogation by security forces. In a similar incident this past Thursday, Sgt. Nir Kahane, 20, was stabbed in the neck while examining the bag of a Palestinian man using the humanitarian lane at the Qalandiya checkpoint, near Jerusalem. Kahane died at the scene. The Fatah-affiliated Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades took responsibility for the fatal stabbing, though Israel Radio reported that the assailant worked alone. Meanwhile, security operations continued in the West Bank. On Monday, an undercover Border Police unit arrested three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Nablus. During the course of the operation, Palestinians opened fire on the officers damaging a military vehicle. Security forces have arrested 13 terrorists in Nablus, including eight Hamas members nabbed by paratroopers over the past week. In Jenin IDF personnel detonated a car full of explosives destroying the vehicle without causing any other damage. The Gaza Strip also saw fighting Monday. In the afternoon, a Kassam rocket landed east of Sderot near a Mekorot water facility; there were no casualties. The IDF responded to the attack with an artillery barrage on the rocket launch site. According to the IDF Spokesman, Palestinians have fired nearly 50 rockets and over 70 mortar shells since the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August. In the past, particularly in October, the air force cracked sonic booms over Gaza cities in response to Kassam rocket firing, but this non-lethal tactic has prompted criticism from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel as being a form of collective punishment against civilians. On Sunday the group filed an emergency injunction with the Supreme Court to stop the sonic booms.