Three attempted stabbing attacks thwarted in West Bank

Security forces arrest Palestinian teen girl planning attack; 14-year-old Palestinian with knife arrested near Hebron; assailant at Habitot junction shot dead.

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH, TOVAH LAZAROFF, YAAKOV LAPPIN
Updated: FEBRUARY 22, 2016 00:26
Palestinian teen arrested at Tapuah junction
A Palestinian assailant was shot and killed by IDF soldiers after he attempted to stab them near Nablus in one of three attacks against security forces in the West Bank on Sunday morning.
In Jerusalem, settlers held a rally outside the prime minister’s office during the weekly government meeting and called for an end to the rampant Palestinian terrorism on the streets of the country.
“The government must wake up,” Avi Ro’eh, head of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea and Samaria, said at the rally.
“Almost 50 years have passed since the liberation of Judea and Samaria, and we are still fighting for our daily existence. We do not feel that there is a determination to fight the terrorism,” he said, calling on the government to take a much firmer action against terrorism, including exiling the families of the Palestinian assailants from the West Bank.
Soldiers were on a security patrol near the Habitot junction in the Samaria region when a Palestinian teenager attempted to stab them, the IDF Spokesman’s Office said. None of the soldiers was wounded.
Qusai Diab Abu Al-Rub, 16, was killed by the soldiers and buried in his hometown of Kabatiya south of Jenin. He is the cousin of Ahmed Najeh Abu Al-Rub, one of the three Palestinians who carried out the stabbing and shooting attack at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem on February 3, in which Border Policewoman Hadar Cohen, 19, was killed.
The three assailants from the February 3 attack, all of whom were from Kabatiya, were killed. Since October, 10 Palestinian terrorists have been killed by the IDF while carrying out attacks against Israelis.
In the area of Hebron on Sunday, a 14-yearold Palestinian with a knife attempted to stab a soldier near the village of Kafr Bnei Naim.
In that attempted attack, soldiers overpowered the assailant and arrested him. There were no injuries.
Near Tapuah junction, east of Ariel, Border Police arrested a female Palestinian teenager with a knife.
Initial investigations indicated that the 17-year-old suspect from the village of Kusra, less than 10 km. east of Tapuah junction, had arrived at the scene inspired by incitement on social media, intending to carry out an attack against Jews.
Police reported that during the incident, security forces stationed near the flashpoint intersection called on the suspect, who was headed toward a hitchhiking spot, to stop, but she refused to heed their calls and continued advancing toward them.
The patrol’s commander cocked his weapon in her direction, after which she walked a few meters and halted. When asked to raise her hands, the security forces saw a knife in her hand drop to the ground.
The teen was taken in by security forces for further investigation.
Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben-Dahan, who was touring the area at the time of the attack to push for construction of a bypass road that would safely skirt the Palestinians areas that Israeli drivers now pass through, said the attacks only prove how necessary such a road is.