Terror Attacks

I've been a supporter of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years and I've also campaigned against the vile practice of building more settlements on occupied land in the West Bank.

Lots of Israelis support these views as well, admittedly not in sufficient numbers at the moment to bring about a lasting peace in the Middle East although to be fair the present Israeli Government is not the only road block to peace.

But if I had been on the Tel Aviv bus where a terrorist launched a murderous knife attack on fellow passengers, he wouldn't have paused to check on my politics or support for the Palestinian cause before doing his level best to kill me.

Which is why these terrorist attacks, which are encouraged by groups like Hamas, are so wrong and impossible to justify, just like the rockets they launch at Israeli civilians.   

Tel Aviv bus knife attack: four seriously injured

Israeli police arrest Palestinian man reported to have stabbed commuters in suspected terrorist attack in centre of city

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem - The Guardian

An Israeli police officer secures the scene after a suspected terrorist attack on a bus in Tel Aviv. Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP

At least nine people have been injured on a bus in central Tel Aviv – injuring four seriously – in a knife attack by a Palestinian man who was then shot and arrested while trying to escape.

The attack – which police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said was being treated as a terrorist incident – took place at about 7.15am on a No 40 bus crowded with commuters during the rush-hour.

There were conflicting reports about the number of people injured. Police said 13 were injured in total. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said seven were wounded in the stabbing – four of them seriously – and two other passengers suffered injuries while running off the bus. Other passengers attended hospital with trauma symptoms, the ambulance service said.

According to Israeli police, the man boarded the bus on Menachem Begin Road and stabbed the driver in the chest after the vehicle had travelled about 400 metres from the stop. The driver was identified as 55-year-old Herzl Biton.

Despite being stabbed Biton managed to call a colleague at the bus company Kasis Matsliach. Matsliach told Israel radio that Biton said to him: ‘Matti, Matti, a terrorist is on my bus, save me. He severely injured me. I’ve been stabbed all over. He stabbed the passengers. I am next to Ma’ariv headquarters now. He severely injured me. I am bleeding. I am going to die. Save me. Save me. And if something happens to me, watch over my children.’”

Pictures of the weapon used in the attack showed a large kitchen knife. Its blade had been bent and its wooden handle broken off. It was not immediately clear if all of those injured in the attack suffered stab wounds.

“Shortly after he boarded the bus, the assailant stabbed the driver several times but … he resisted the attack and in this way the terrorist was surprised,” Tel Aviv police chief Bentzi Sau told reporters at the scene.

In their first comments after the incident, senior Israeli officials suggested there had been no warning prior to the attack and that it was unclear if the man belonged to a militant group.

A vehicle ferrying prisoners to a court hearing was following the bus and officers pursued the assailant as he fled into a nearby street where he was shot in the leg and arrested.

Speaking to army radio, one of the prison service officers involved, identified as Benny Botershvili, said: “We saw the bus swerve to the side … then stop at a green light. Suddenly, we saw people running out of the bus and when we saw them shouting for help, we jumped out (of our vehicle) and I and three others started running after the terrorist. At first we fired in the air, then at his legs. The terrorist fell, we handcuffed him and turned him over to police.”

Moses Collins, who was in a bus behind, described seeing the bus in front swerving in the road and stop before a man got off and ran. As passengers on Collins’s bus got off, they could see injured passengers covered in blood.

Another witness told the Israeli news website Ynet: “We were in our car behind the bus. Suddenly we saw people getting off and running, screaming, and crying hysterically. We didn’t know what to do. We were scared he was going to come towards us. Several ambulances arrived and they just evacuated everyone.”

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, did not claim responsibility but praised Wednesday’s attack as “brave and heroic” in a tweet by Izzat Risheq, a Hamas leader residing in Qatar.

The stabbing was a “natural response to the occupation and its terrorist crimes against our people”, Risheq said.

The incident took place after a period of relative calm following a summer and autumn marked by violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, blamed Hamas and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. “The terrorist attack in Tel Aviv is the direct result of the poisonous incitement being disseminated by the Palestinian Authority against the Jews and their state. This same terrorism is trying to attack us in Paris, Brussels and everywhere,” he said.

“It is Hamas – Abu Mazen’s partners in a unity government – that hastened to commend this attack. This is the same Hamas that announced it will sue Israel at the international criminal court in the Hague. Abu Mazen is responsible for both the incitement and the dangerous move at the ICC in the Hague.”

The stabbing is the latest in a series of “lone-wolf” attacks in Israel in recent months. About a dozen people have been killed in Palestinian attacks, including five people attacked with guns and meat cleavers in a bloody assault on a Jerusalem synagogue.

Most of the violence has occurred in Jerusalem, though there have been other attacks in Tel Aviv and the West Bank. In Jerusalem, the violence followed months of tension between Jews and Palestinians in east Jerusalem, the section of the city the Palestinians demand as their future capital.

The area experienced unrest and near-daily attacks by Palestinians after a wave of violence last summer, capped by a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.