Israel to expand settlement in response to deadly stabbing

Israel’s defence minister said 400 new settlement homes would be built in the West Bank as a punishment for a stabbing attack by a Palestinian that left one Jewish settler dead and two more injured.

Avigdor Lieberman made the announcement on Friday morning after a Palestinian teenager scaled a fence around the Adam settlement north of Jerusalem and stabbed three people on Thursday evening.

The 17-year old attacker was shot dead by one of the three men he attacked, but not before he had killed Yotam Ovadia, 31, and injured another man aged 58, who was taken to hospital and later described as being in a “serious but stable” condition.

The third man, aged 50, also received light stab wounds before fatally shooting the assailant, who was named as Mohammed Dar Youssef from the village of Kobar, near Ramallah.

Israeli soldiers raided several properties in Kobar on Friday morning, questioning family members before retracting their work permits. Palestinian villagers confronted the Israeli forces, who responded by firing tear gas.

Lieberman said the defences around Adam, also known as Geva Binyamin, would be secured and that new settlement housing units would be built.

“The best answer to terror is the momentum of settlement in Judea and Samaria,” Lieberman tweeted. “That’s why I left this morning to promote a plan to build 400 housing units in Adam and approve it in planning institutions in the coming week.”

Hamas released a statement calling the stabbing “a heroic operation” and “a natural response to the crimes of the occupation,” as the Gaza-based Islamist group said it would avenge the deadly bombing raids on Gaza in recent days by Israeli jets.