Palestinian driver that hit 4 IDF soldiers released

Police release driver in Neve Daniel hit and run that hit IDF soldiers, rule out terrorist motive.

By BEN HARTMAN
MDA 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
MDA 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Police on Thursday ruled out the nationalist motive in a hit-and-run accident that left four soldiers lightly to moderately wounded on Tuesday.
Ch.- Insp. Dudi Asraf, spokesman for the Judea and Samaria police district, said Thursday that the driver of the Palestinian taxi that hit the IDF vehicle turned himself in to police earlier in the day and admitted that he hit the soldiers by accident, lost his composure and drove off without offering assistance.
Asraf said that police have ruled the accident was not in any ways nationalistic, and released the man, a fifty-year-old resident of Kafr Yata in the Palestinian Authority.
The accident took place Tuesday near Neve Daniel, in the Gush Ezion region. Initially the possibility of a terror attack was probed, but police quickly began to rule out terrorism, largely because the Palestinian cab first hit the IDF vehicle and it did not appear that the vehicle was aimed at the soldiers.
After the accident, Magen David Adom paramedics treated the soldiers on the scene, before evacuating them to the Sha'arei Tzedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, with three lightly wounded and one in moderate condition.
The IDF and police launched a search of the area for the vehicle and its occupants, but found no one before the man turned himself in Thursday.
Back in September, 45-year-old Lior Farhi was killed on highway 505 in the West Bank, when he was struck by a Kfar Qassem resident who tore off without offering assistance.
Farhi, working as the security guard for the settlement of Shaar Hatikvah, was filming the man sneaking Palestinian laborers into his car, before trying to spirit them across the Green Line into Israel.
Last week, a murder indictment was brought against driver Arkan Badir, 25, of Kfar Qassem in the Lod Magistrate’s Court. Prosecutors believe Badir sped up and intentionally ran over Farhi, in order to avoid getting caught smuggling the laborers.


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