15-year-old girl indicted for 2 Jerusalem stabbing attempts
Palestinian teen ‘wanted to die as a martyr’; planned second attack after court ordered her release for first
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
A 15-year-old Palestinian girl was indicted on Thursday for two stabbing attempts in Jerusalem.
According to the indictment, the girl bought a knife and went to the City of David in Jerusalem, where a suspicious tourist noticed her and called security services, who arrested her.
After the court ordered the girl’s release, she planned a second attack, this time in the Old City, where she was arrested again.
The teenager said she wanted “to die as a martyr,” according to Channel 10.
Palestinian children and teenagers have played a prominent role in the ongoing wave of violence which began in October. Earlier this month, 16-year-old Lama al-Bakhri, from Hebron, was shot and wounded by IDF soldiers after trying to stab an Israeli in the settlement of Kiryat Arba.
In November, 16-year-old Hadil Wajia Awad and her 14-year-old cousin Nurhan Awad used scissors to stab and wound an elderly Palestinian man near the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem, believing him to be Jewish. Hadil was shot dead and Nurhan badly wounded by an off-duty police sapper who happened to be in the area.
Also in November, police caught a Palestinian teenager from Yatir on suspicion of stabbing four people, including a 13-year-old girl, in the southern city of Kiryat Gat.
Setting a record for the youngest assailant in the current round of Israeli-Palestinian violence, an 11-year-old East Jerusalem boy was wounded by the light rail security guard he tried to stab in the northeastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev last month. His 14-year-old cousin was subdued by passengers.
In October, Ishak Badran, 16, of Kafr Aqab in East Jerusalem, was shot dead after stabbing two elderly Israeli men on the city’s Hanevi’im Street as they were returning from synagogue. During the same month, Bian Asila, 16, from Hebron, was shot and killed for attacking an Israeli policewoman near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Also in October, two East Jerusalem brothers, aged 13 and 15, stabbed a 13-year-old boy as he was riding his bike in Pisgat Zeev. The boy, Naor Shalev Ben-Ezra, recovered to celebrate his bar mitzvah earlier this month at the Western Wall.
In light of the number of adolescent attackers, ministers okayed a move on November 22 to allow assailants under 14 years of age to be charged.
