In another difficult day for the people of Israel, two separate terror attacks by Palestinian Arabs have left an Israeli soldier in critical condition following a stabbing in central Tel Aviv, as well as a 17-year-old girl dead in the West Bank.
On Monday afternoon, a soldier who was about to enter the Haganah train station was approached by a young Arab man from Nablus, who stabbed him twice in the stomach before fleeing to a nearby street.
Police forces and Magen David Adom emergency teams were deployed to the scene, and the police found 18-year-old Nur al-Din Abu Khashiyeh, a resident of Nablus who was illegally staying in Israel, and arrested him.
The 17-year-old girl was stabbed to death at a hitchhiking station in Gush Etzion , according to Israel’s Channel 2 . She was stabbed in the neck, while a 26-year-old man was injured in the same attack, as was a 50-year-old man who sustained injuries to his jaw.
The brutal terror attacks on Israeli civilians follows comments made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who recently incited his people to wage war on the Jewish State, after riots were quelled by Israeli authorities on the Temple Mount in the past few weeks.
The Israeli government are holding Abbas directly responsible for inciting the attacks , as well as preaching violence and open racism, by saying that a Jew or Christian who enter the Temple Mount “defile it” with their presence.
The challenge facing the Israelis is the fact that this time, it isn’t Hamas rockets or terror tunnels they are fighting, but rather a far more problematic and dangerous threat. Due to the fact that Israel is a democracy, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians alike work within Israel, often in construction, so there is little protection for Israeli citizens against such attacks.
On top of this, Israel has an Arab population of 1.5 million people, and therefore literally has an enemy at her doorstep, making the challenge of fighting terror an even more difficult one.
