IDF takes down memorial to Palestinian assailant in Hebron
Army also confiscates machinery from workshop believed to have been used for making firearms
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
IDF soldiers on Monday took down a stone memorial site for a Palestinian teenager who was killed while stabbing an Israeli border guard in Hebron in 2015, the army said.
On October 17, 2015, 16-year-old Bian Asila, from Hebron, attacked a female Border Police officer near the city’s Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Asila’s knife struck the border guard’s protective vest, causing light injury to her arm. The wounded officer quickly drew her service weapon and shot her attacker dead.
The military said the memorial in the West Bank city was taken down as part of its campaign against “incitement” in Palestinian society.
It was not immediately clear when the memorial stone was put up.
“Some inciting materials were also seized during the operation,” the army added without elaborating.
Also in Hebron, the army raided a workshop early Monday morning that it said was being used to illegally manufacture guns.
The army seized seven pieces of machinery from the workshop, but did not find any weapons or gun parts inside, a military spokesperson said.
Common drill presses and lathes can be used to make what are known as Carlo-style submachine guns — crude, inaccurate but deadly weapons that have been used in a number of terror attacks in the past two years.
Since 2016, the IDF has cracked down on the illegal weapons trade in the West Bank, raiding dozens of workshops and uncovering hundreds of guns.
Also Monday, police found a Carlo-style submachine gun in the home of a resident of the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.
The man was arrested and was expected to appear before a judge later in the day on Monday, police said.
In Bethlehem, police arrested a group of five Palestinians between the ages of 17 and 24 who are suspected of throwing Molotov cocktails at the Rachel’s Tomb holy site in Bethlehem, a police spokesperson said.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, the IDF arrested three Palestinians suspected of taking part in so-called “popular terrorism” — a catch-all term typically meaning rock throwing and violent demonstrations against security forces.
One suspect was arrested in Sanur, near Jenin; another was picked up in Nilin, near Ramallah; and the last was detained in the Qalandiya refugee camp, the army said.
