Hamas vows more violence amid West Bank crackdown after Tel Aviv attack
Terror group says wave of arrests following Sarona shooting spree will not deter Palestinians ‘determined to fight occupation’
Palestinian terror group Hamas condemned on Saturday the demolition of the home of a Palestinian teen convicted of murdering an Israeli mother of six in the West Bank settlement of Otniel in January.
The terror group also condemned the wave of arrests of Hamas members and others in the West Bank, following the deadly terror attack in Tel Aviv on Wednesday in which four people were killed by two Palestinian cousins who opened fire on customers at a Sarona Market cafe.
Hamas said Israel’s crackdown would not deter Palestinians “determined to fight the occupation,” according to Israel Radio.
Israel sealed off the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on Thursday, as part of a series of initial responses to the attack. The measure also came ahead of the Jewish festival of Shavuot which begins Saturday evening.
The closure began overnight Thursday-Friday and will last until late Sunday night, when the holiday ends.
Hamas praised the Tel Aviv attack and said the two gunmen, Khalid and Muhammad Muhamra were members of the group. It dubbed the attack the “Ramadan operation” as it came two days after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began on Monday.
Earlier Saturday, IDF forces, in cooperation with Border Police and Civil Administration officials, tore down the house belonging to the family of 16-year-old Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, who stabbed and killed Dafna Meir at the entrance to her home earlier this year.
The house was located in the village of Yatta near Hebron, which is also home to the two terrorists who perpetrated the Tel Aviv attack earlier this week.
Adais has confessed to killing the 38-year-old Meir at her home. The investigation indicated Adais waited for Meir to come out of her front door and then attacked her, “plunging the knife into her stomach.”
He then tried to retrieve the weapon in order to attack Meir’s children, who were inside, but Meir wrestled with the attacker and prevented him from doing so, forcing him to flee the scene.
Meir was critically wounded and later died of her injuries.
According to the charge sheet, after fleeing Otniel, Adais returned home, washed the blood off his arms and watched a movie with his family.
Meir, who had been adopted as a teenager, worked as a nurse in the neurosurgery department of Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. She was also a premarital counselor for brides.
Prior to carrying out the deadly attack, Adais watched “Palestinian television broadcasts which portrayed Israel as ‘killing young Palestinians,’” a statement from the Shin Bet security agency said after he was captured.
