IDF arrests suspects in rock attack that seriously injured Israeli woman
Israeli troops apprehend a number of people in West Bank village; manhunt and investigation continue
The Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday it had arrested several suspects in the West Bank for a rock-throwing attack earlier in the day that seriously injured Israeli Rivka Tytell while she was driving her car.
The IDF said in a statement that troops made the arrests in the West Bank village of Deir Nidham north of Ramallah. The attack on Sunday afternoon happened near the village.
The arrests were made with the help of intelligence provided by the Shin Bet internal security service. The suspects were transferred to the Shin Bet for interrogation, the IDF said.
“IDF troops will continue operations in the area of Deir Nidham until the completion of the search and investigation, and checkpoints have been set up in the area,” the statement said.
Tytell was traveling with two of her children in the car when she was attacked. Channel 12 reported that after she was hit, one of the children managed to take control of the car and bring it to a stop.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said medics treated the injured driver, who was conscious, before taking her to Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan for treatment for a head injury. The children were unharmed.
A West Bank council spokesperson named the victim as Tytell, wife of Jewish terrorist Jack Tytell, who was convicted in 2013 for a string of nationalistically motivated murders and terror attacks spanning a decade.
Jack Tytell is serving two life sentences and an additional 30 years in prison for murdering two Palestinians, two other attempted murders, placing a bomb next to now-deceased far-left academic Zev Sternhell, and other offenses.
A spokesperson for the Binyamin Regional Council in the West Bank said Sunday night that Rivka Tytell had undergone surgery on her head following the attack. The statement said she was responsive, but still in serious condition, and that she had been transferred for further treatment to the neurological department at Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv.
Sunday’s rock-throwing incident came amid a period of heightened tensions in the West Bank.
Last month, Israeli mother-of-six Esther Horgen was found dead in a northern West Bank forest where she had gone for a run.
The Israeli security services reported 13 incidents of stone-throwing by settlers against Palestinians in the days immediately following Horgen’s murder, including an incident in which a 16-year-old, Ahuvia Sandak, was killed in a car crash, during a police chase after allegedly hurling rocks.
Sandak’s death ignited days of near-nightly protests in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Demonstrators have thrown stones, assaulted police officers, attacked buses and blocked major thoroughfares.
Additionally, an unarmed Palestinian man, Haroun Abu Aram, was left paralyzed from the neck down on Friday, after being shot at close range by Israeli forces, during an operation to confiscate illegal Palestinian construction equipment in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills.
