After shooting, IDF bolsters West Bank presence
Amid uptick in violence, senior officer denies there’s a coordinated terror cell behind attacks
The Israeli army on Tuesday night said it would beef up its presence in the West Bank, amid an uptick in violence in the area over the past two weeks.
The IDF announced that a battalion from the Nahal infantry Brigade would be sent to bolster the security forces in the area, while noting that a string of attacks did not amount to an “intifada,” but was rather linked to the month-long Muslim Ramadan holiday.
The decision came after Malachy Moshe Rosenfeld, 25, was shot on Monday night while driving on a West Bank highway and succumbed to his wounds on Tuesday.
Three other people in the vehicle were also wounded in the attack, after a gunman in a passing car opened fire near the settlement of Shvut Rachel, north of Ramallah.
Monday’s attack came 10 days after a 25-year-old Israeli man, Danny Gonen, was shot and killed near the settlement of Dolev, northwest of Jerusalem, in a drive-by shooting.
The deadly shooting Monday was the sixth in the past two weeks.
Monday also saw an Israeli soldier stabbed at a checkpoint near Bethlehem, and on Tuesday a Palestinian man was shot at the Qalandiya checkpoint next to Jerusalem after running at security forces while yelling “allahu akbar,” or “God is greatest” in Arabic. He was not apparently armed.
An IDF officer told Hebrew media that the incidents were not part of coordinated strategy, as was the case in the past when Palestinians launched “intifadas” — popular, violent uprisings.
His remarks came after news reports surmised that the attacks could be linked, and organized by a new terror cell in the West Bank.
“We believe this string of terror attacks will stop as soon as we lay our hands on the perpetrators of the latest terror attacks,” the officer told the Ynet news website. “We are far from what happened in the Second Intifada despite the latest signs.
“There is no infrastructure that guides the terrorists in the Jordan Valley, near Dolev, Rachel’s Tomb or Qalandiya,” he added.
The officer denied that the beefed up army presence, or the restrictions on Temple Mount access announced Tuesday, were a form of the “collective punishment” against the Palestinian residents of the West Bank.
“This is no collective punishment of the Palestinian population and steps were taken in accord with our assessment of the situation,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon blamed the uptick in attacks on Palestinian incitement stemming from television programming during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
On Friday, a Palestinian assailant was shot and killed by IDF soldiers after he opened fire on Israeli troops at a checkpoint in the West Bank. No soldiers were injured in the attack.
The attacks came a year after three Israeli teenagers, Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel, were abducted as they hitchhiked in the West Bank.
After a massive manhunt, which included the arrest of hundreds of Hamas activists, the teens’ bodies were discovered in a field north of Hebron.
At the time, the IDF deployed 10 extra battalions of soldiers to help with the search.
