TERRORISM: Palestinian-Israeli Violence Heats Up in Otherwise Peaceful Jerusalem Neighborhood
As one neighborhood in East Jerusalem is well aware, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t limited to Hamas’ rockets and Israeli’s Iron Dome protection.
Violent interaction consistently takes place. The latest incident occured when a 14-year-old Palestinian girl stabbed an Israeli woman who was walking with her five young children, one in a stroller, in the flashpoint Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem Wednesday morning.
Police suspect, media reports say, that the incident was a terrorist attack.
Police officers later arrested the 14-year-old Palestinian girl, Nofoud Jad Araf Hamad, at her neighborhood school. Her father and mother, the Times of Israel reported, were also detained for interrogation as well as another student, a teacher and the school’s principal.
Reports say that Moriah Cohen, 26, was walking her children to school when the teen stabbed her in the back with a nearly 12-inch knife. The head of the Hadassah Mount Scopus trauma center where Cohen was treated said the knife was still in Cohen’s back when she arrived. She was assessed to be “mildly injured.”
“The stabber is our neighbor,” Dvir Cohen, the husband of the victim, told The Times of Israel. “She lives right in front of us. She followed her, got close to her, and then stabbed her.”
Dvir Cohen said that multiple Molotov cocktails have been thrown at the Cohen’s house and that they hid their menorahs during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. He went on to say that it was the family’s “mission” to live there.
Upon hearing of the incident, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted, “We will not allow terrorism to raise it’s head.”
Wednesday’s stabbing was the latest in a string of attacks since mid-November. Only one of the assailants was found to be formally tied to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs the Gaza Strip.
Mohammad Mahmoud, the suspect’s attorney, said his client denies any connection to the incident. A hearing is set for Thursday morning at the Jerusalem Magistrate Court.
Nofoud’s family is among dozens of Palestinians facing eviction in Sheikh Jarrah, where daily confrontations between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police led to an escalation in violence in the Gaza Strip in May. {eoa}
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