Girl, 17, arrested with knife at West Bank junction

Border Police on Tuesday arrested a 17-year-old Palestinian girl with a large kitchen knife in her bag near a heavily guarded junction south of Nablus — the site of several terror attacks during the current wave of violence which started in September.

Border Police were on alert at the Tapuah checkpoint near the junction after receiving army intelligence that a young woman had left her home in the Jenin area with the intention of carrying out an attack, a police spokesperson said.

The girl, traveling in a taxi, aroused suspicion when she said she did not have identification with her. A check revealed that she was the one named by army intelligence, police said.

The girl was arrested and taken in for questioning by security services.

In February, another 17-year-old girl was arrested in the same place for carrying a knife. During her initial interrogation, she said she had planned to carry out an attack after watching “inciting videos” on social media sites, police said.

In January, police found a knife on a 26-year-old resident of Jenin at the junction.

In November, four Israelis were wounded, two of them seriously, in a car-ramming attack at the site. A group of Israelis was waiting for a bus when the driver — 22-year-old Sleiman Shahin from Ramallah — approached the intersection, then accelerated into the waiting crowd, according to witnesses and police. Border Police shot and killed him at the site.