JERUSALEM—After a few days of relative quiet, the two-month old Palestinian mini-intifada resumed Thursday with attacks on the West Bank and Tel Aviv that some officials believe may have been influenced by Islamic State’s recent rampage in Paris.
A Palestinian in Tel Aviv who worked in a restaurant burst into an improvised synagogue in a nearby building hosting workshops and stabbed one of the congregants to death in the midst of evening prayers. The assailant was driven out but on the street fatally stabbed another person and caused minor injuries to a third before passersby overcame him. Police took him into custody.
The attacker was 36 years old and a father of five, a marked deviation from the profile of most of those participating in the current round of violence, who have generally been in their late teens or early twenties. A security official suggested that this might reflect the influence of the Islamic State and the massacre this week in Paris.
This appeared to be confirmed when officers informed the assailant’s family in a village near the West Bank city of Hebron that their house will be demolished in accordance with the government’s policy to destroy the homes of terrorists who kill. The mother, who applauded her son’s action, said he had been influenced by what he had seen on television in recent days, without spelling out what exactly he had seen.
In another event, three Palestinian women tried to enter an army base on the West Bank and were found to be carrying hidden knives. They were taken into custody. Several Arab women have carried out knife attacks in recent weeks but never in groups and never have any tried to penetrate a military installation.
Near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, two Israelis and a Palestinian were killed and six persons wounded when a lone Palestinian man fired an automatic weapon from his moving car at cars backed up in a traffic jam. He then crashed into an Israeli car and was apprehended by the driver. According to officials, the Palestinian who was killed by the assailant was one of the drivers caught in the traffic jam.
In Hebron, to which the focus of the current round of violence has shifted from Jerusalem, a 16-year-old Palestinian youth was stopped by soldiers who believed his actions suspicious. They found a knife in his sleeve. He was detained for questioning.
Meanwhile, five Israeli Arabs were indicted Wednesday for planning to go to Syria to join the Islamic State. All were from the same town, Jaljulya. Three weeks ago, a resident of Jaljulya, Nadal Saleh, 23, succeeded in paragliding from the Golan Heights into Syria where he apparently joined Islamic State forces. In investigating that incident, Israeli security officials discovered that five others from Jaljulya were making plans to go to Syria as well, but by flying to Turkey and making their way across the Syrian border. One of them had done so two years ago and returned to Israel where he was sentenced to a year in prison.
Some 40 Israeli Arabs are believed to have joined the Islamic State forces. A few have returned to Israel and served prison terms. In a statement, the Shin Bet security service termed the phenomenon "a significant danger to state security." Steps are presumed to have been taken to prevent future paraglider attempts.