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| Tonight’s attempted stabbing at Qalandiya as reported by a Palestinian Arab news site |
Alert Israeli security personnel apprehend a young Palestinian Arab woman of about 21 around 9 o’clock this evening (Thursday) as she sought to walk through the busy Qalandiya Checkpoint on the main road between Jerusalem and the PA administrative capital, Ramallah.
Israel’s Channel 2 news this evening, quoted by Times of Israel, said she was from Al-Azariya and that she admitted to the security people that she was intending to carry out a terrorist attack. A knife was found concealed in her clothes or bag.
Another knifing attack was thwarted at the same location just this past Saturday afternoon [report] when a different young Palestinian Arab woman, also in her twenties, was stopped by security personnel and found to be carrying a knife in her bag. And a month before that, yet another young Palestinian Arab woman, this time just 18, was shot in the leg by Israeli security people as she rushed towards them, armed with a knife, and tried to stab them. In that July 26, 2016 intercept [report], the attacker was left with light injuries and was treated at the scene by an ambulance crew from Magen David Adom before being removed from the scene to assist the authorities in their enquiries.
The Qalandiya crossover is on the edge of the once-busy industrial zone of Atarot, on the northern edge of Jerusalem. Apart from previous terror attacks of which there have been many [links], it’s been in the news recently because of plans announced by an Israeli supermarket entrepreneur, Rami Levy, to erect the first “Israeli-Palestinian mall” [see this backgrounder from June 28, 2016]:
Levy’s company has been working hard to make sure the stores will reflect the local population, including finding Palestinian retailers and private shops to rent storefronts. Currently, most of the Palestinian stores that have reserved space are food suppliers, including the well-known Palestinian bakery Sinokrot. Another possible store will be the famous Zalatimo candy store. At one point, Levy had reeled one of the biggest Palestinian wholesalers of electronics, but after the deal was made, the potential client got cold feet. “There are many who are not afraid. I have rented to many Palestinians. I don’t know exactly happened, but he became scared for political reasons.” [Times of Israel, June 28, 2016]
Al-Azariya, a hard-scrabble Jerusalem village which figures in Biblical accounts under another name – Bethany – has produced a string of Palestinian Arab terror attackers in the past couple of years. One such attack, by a 16 year old boy from that village on December 3, 2014, was directed at… customers at another branch of the Rami Levy supermarket chain [see “03-Dec-14: Stabbing attack inside an Israeli supermarket“, and “4-Dec-14: Knifing attack on shoppers in an Israeli supermarket: the aftermath“.
The Palestinian Arab media reports this evening’s attempted knife attack in customary fashion. A Ma’an News Agency headline tonight reads “Israeli forces detain young Palestinian woman at Qalandiya for allegedly attempting stab attack“
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