JERUSALEM – An Israeli couple were killed in a shooting attack on their car on the West Bank Thursday night while four of their children sat in the back seat. The children were uninjured.
Security forces moved swiftly to prevent the killings from touching off widespread violence between Palestinians and settlers. Roads were closed off in a wide area and the army announced that it was moving four additional battalions of troops into the Nablus region where the shooting occurred.
There were early reports of enraged settlers stoning houses in Nablus and nearby Arab villages. Jewish rioters clashed at one road junction with Israeli troops and police.
An increase in violence since last summer’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has raised fears of a new intifada, or Palestinian uprising. The two previous intifadas took years to subside. Officials have until now said that the violence has been spontaneous and local, not an organized campaign.
The couple, Eitam and Na’ama Henkin, are settlers prominent in their community and parents of six children. The four youngest—aged four months, four, seven and nine—were with them in the car. Security officials said they were attacked when their car slowed down at a curve. The assailants, who were in a car, opened fire from their vehicle. The father, who was driving, was found dead on the road. The children said he had gotten out of the car after being wounded multiple times and opened a back door door, telling them to flee. Apparently, however, they remained in the car. According to one account, one of the assailants descended from his car to verify that the victims were dead. The children were found weeping in the car moments after the killings by Israeli motorists.
A statement issued by a settler roof organization, the Yesha Council, linked the killings to the speech given at the UN yesterday by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. "The ongoing incitement of the Palestinian Authority and the bevy of lies and incitement from Abu Mazen (President Abbas) at the UN are the direct cause. The government of Israel must offer an unequivocal security response, including the arrest of all inciters and widespread settlement construction."
In Abbas’ talk, he said that Israel had consistently violated the Oslo Accords which form the economic and security basis for daily life in the West Bank, and that the Palestinian Authority felt no need to honor the agreements either.
Naftali Bennett, the education minister and a settler leader himself, said, "A people whose leaders incite to murder will never have a state, and this has to be said clearly."
Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip hailed the "heroic terror attack" and called for more such "quality attacks." A statement issued by Hamas said "Zionists will pay the price for (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s criminal policies everywhere."
Israel Radio cited reports that the assailants, presumed to be Palestinian, were seen fleeing to a nearby village.
In a series of drive-by shootings in the same area in recent months, one Israeli was killed and several wounded.