Attack ‘lasted seconds,’ recalls officer wounded in West Bank

A Border Police officer stabbed and wounded by a Palestinian attacker in the West Bank early Monday said he was determined to return to operational duty, after the knife attack that “lasted only a few seconds.”

“We were ready and prepared,” recalled the policeman, identified as D. “That’s why the incident ended the way it did.”

The stabbing, at the Tapuah Junction checkpoint in the West Bank, was the third such attack in three days.

Security forces identified Muhammad Bassam Abu-Amsha el Atrache, 22, of Kafr Rai south of Jenin, as the assailant. Atrache was shot dead at the scene by a second Border Policeman.

During a routine inspection assignment at the Israel Defense Forces checkpoint at the Tapuah Junction, “we approached a suspicious person to inspect him,” D. told Channel 2 on Monday evening.

“The suspect pulled out a knife, one of the soldiers pushed him back. The attacker came at us again and stabbed me. We neutralized him and, together with an IDF soldier, we ended the incident.”

D. dismissed the knife wound as a “flesh wound. I’ll get it looked after and get back to operations.”

The attack came two days after a Border Police officer was lightly wounded when he was stabbed by a Palestinian man near the same junction. In that incident as well, the assailant was shot and killed.

That attack came hours after an IDF soldier was lightly wounded by a Palestinian wielding a knife at the Ofer checkpoint in the West Bank, north of Jerusalem. The attacker in that incident was shot and wounded at the scene.

The incidents were the latest in a string of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in the West Bank over the last several weeks. Earlier this month, three soldiers were wounded when a Palestinian plowed his car into them while they were on a foot patrol in the northern West Bank.

Days later, an Israeli civilian was stabbed and moderately wounded in an attack by a Palestinian man at a gas station on Route 443. And on Friday evening, a gas station was set alight on Route 60, near the West Bank settlement of Eli, by unknown assailants who fled the scene.

Israeli officials have warned of a possible uptick in violence in the West Bank after the fatal firebombing of a Palestinian home in the village of Duma in the northern West Bank, apparently by Jewish extremists, in late July.

Stuart Winer contributed to this report.