Jail for pair who stabbed Jerusalemite

Two Palestinian men who stabbed an elderly Jerusalem man outside his home last year were sentenced to 15 and 17 years in prison Thursday by the Jerusalem District Court. Muhammad Sa'ada, 23, and Daoud Harma'as, 22, both of Halhoul near Hebron, were previously convicted in the same court as part of a plea bargain on charges of attempted murder for stabbing 71-year-old Pinchas Rosenfeld in the city's central Abu Tor neighborhood on December 19, 2004. The two men, who were apprehended at a West Bank checkpoint earlier this year, told police investigators that they "wanted to kill a Jew" since they were "unemployed and fed-up." Rosenfeld was moderately wounded in the late-night attack, his heavy winter coat shielding him from more serious injuries. On the night of the attack, the two Arab attackers, who were in Israel illegally, made their way to the mixed Jerusalem neighborhood, where they lay in wait for a Jewish victim. Shortly after 11 p.m. they spotted Rosenfeld and his wife emerging from a vehicle near their home on Rehov Tzuria. Sa'ada stabbed the pensioner in the back near the entrance to his building before throwing the knife on the ground. The court said in its sentencing Thursday that the "planned cold-blooded murder" of the pensioner, simply because he was a Jew, required it to hand down a stiff jail term. The maximum sentence for attempted murder in Israel is 20 years.