21-year old Israeli woman killed in one of three stabbing attacks

23 November 2015, 9:20 am

A young Jewish woman has succumbed to her injuries after being stabbed by a 34-year old Palestinian man in the West Bank on Sunday.

Hadar Buchris, 20, who lived in Safed, a city in northern Israel, was attacked at the junction of the Etzion settlement by an assailant from a nearby village, who was shot and killed by security forces at the scene. Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet said he had no history or links to terrorist groups.

Buchris is now the 17th Jewish Israeli victim to die from terror attacks since 1 October, with more than 90 Palestinians shot dead in the same period of violence, which has seen over 70 stabbings.

The Gush Etzion Junction has been a particular flashpoint. On Thursday, 18-year-old American yeshiva student Ezra Schwartz was shot and killed, together with Yaakov Don, 51, a teacher from nearby Alon Shvut, and Shadi Arfah, a 24-year-old Palestinian from Hebron. They had been visiting a nature reserve dedicated to the three Jewish teens kidnapped and killed last year. 

The attack on Buchris was the third such incident on Sunday. Earlier, a Palestinian taxi driver rammed an Israeli car near the Ma’ale Adumim settlement outside Jerusalem, before being shot and killed by one of the passengers in the car. 

In the other, a 16-year old Palestinian was run over and killed by a settler leader in his car. Gershon Mesika, the former head of Samaria Regional Council, said the Palestinian teenager, later identified as Ashrakat Qattanani, was chasing a Jewish girl with a knife. 

“I took a sharp right and knocked into her with the car,” he said. “She fell and a soldier came and finished the job.”

The girl’s father, an imam, said his daughter, who lived in a refugee camp, had sought martyrdom. “My daughter went to the Hawara checkpoint today to seek revenge in her own hands against the Israelis who have stolen our land and continue to kill innocent Palestinian people,” he said.

The spate of attacks led Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce more security measures – including roadblocks – in the Hebron area, where most of the recent attacks have originated. 

“We are facing terrorism by individuals,” he said. “This is not terrorism by organisations, but by individuals with kitchen knives, incited mainly by social media… It is very difficult to hermetically prevent the arrival of such knife-wielding, or other, terrorists to this or that place.”

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