East Jerusalem man gets 16 years for May stabbing

Abu Dis resident sentenced for attempted murder after lightly injuring man in capital

By Sue Surkes

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30 November 2016, 4:35 pm

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Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

The scene of a stabbing attack on Jerusalem's HaNevi'im street, in which an Israeli man was lightly injured, on May 16, 2016. (Magen David Adom)

An East Jerusalem man was jailed for 16 years on Wednesday for stabbing and wounding a man in the capital in a May attack.

The Jerusalem District Court agreed to a plea deal reached between the two sides in light of the paucity of witnesses to the attack.

As part of the deal, the attacker — in his 20s — agreed to a jail term of 16 years for attempted murder, illegally entering Israel and being in possession of a knife.

The court did not give out his name, but Hebrew media identified him as Mohammed Badr, from the village of Abu Dis on Jerusalem’s outskirts.

The handle of a knife believed to have been used in a stabbing attack in central Jerusalem on May 16, 2016. (Israel Police)

He will also have to pay compensation to his victim, a yeshiva student, of NIS 80,000 ($20,840).

At the time of the attack, the victim, aged around 30, was sitting on a low wall outside of a building on Hanevi’im Street in the city center with his wife and two children.

He sustained light injuries to his shoulder.

Hanevi’im street, which leads from downtown Jerusalem to the Old City, has been the site of the several stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists over the years.

The attack came toward the end of a spate of violence starting in October 2015, which saw 36 Israelis, two Americans and an Eritrean national killed in Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks.

According to AFP figures, some 238 Palestinians, a Jordanian and a Sudanese migrant have also been killed, most of them in the course of carrying out attacks, Israel says, and many of the others in clashes with troops in the West Bank and at the Gaza border, as well as in Israeli airstrikes in the Strip.