Israel bars Hebron governor for visiting terrorists’ families

Kamal Humeid’s entry permit revoked after he pays condolence calls to relatives of Palestinian who killed Israeli girl

Israel on Sunday barred the Hebron governor from entering its territory after he visited the family of a Palestinian who killed an Israeli teenage girl in her sleep, officials said.

On Thursday, 19-year-old Mohammed Nasser Tarayra broke into the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the West Bank, on the outskirts of Hebron, and stabbed 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel to death before he was shot dead by a security guard.

The terror attack sparked outrage and prompted Israel to put in place an “effective closure” on Hebron and significantly increased the presence of soldiers in the area, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said.

The decision to bar Governor Kamal Humeid from Israel was taken by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli Defense Ministry unit that manages civilian affairs for Palestinians in the West Bank and liaises with Gaza.

A statement said Humeid had paid a condolence visit to Tarayra’s family and was therefore “barred from entering Israel,” and that he had been stripped of “his privileges,” without elaborating.

Reproduction photo, courtesy of the family, of Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, who was stabbed and killed in a terror attack in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, in the West Bank on June 30, 2016 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Humeid said on Facebook that he does not enjoy any special privileges and has “no business in Israel” that would lead him to enter the Jewish state.

A day after Thursday’s attack, 48-year-old Israeli Miki Mark was killed after his car was fired on by a suspected Palestinian terrorist south of Hebron.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet on Sunday that a series of measures had been taken, “including aggressive ones which had not been used in the past” to respond to such attacks.

Muhammad Nasser Tarayrah, 17, from the Palestinian village of Bani Naim was the terrorist who killed 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel in her bedroom in Kiryat Arba on June 30, 2016. (Facebook)

“This includes the lockdown of the entire Hebron district,” home to 700,000 Palestinians, he said.

Netanyahu said the army had also revoked the Israeli work permits of residents of Beni Naim, the home village of Palestinian assailants.

Other measures, he said, included a “massive” bolstering of Israeli troops and an investigation into family members of Palestinian assailants “and their arrest if they were involved” in attacks.

On Friday a relative of Tarayra, 27-year-old Sarah Tarayra, was shot dead after drawing a knife on Israeli forces in Hebron.

His sister, Lara Tarayrah, was arrested overnight Saturday, with the army saying that she had incited violence and expressed support for terrorism.

Hebron has been one of the main loci in a wave of deadly unrest that has rocked Israel and the Palestinian territories since October, with the army saying 80 of the attacks on Israelis were carried out by Palestinians from the Hebron area.

Several hundred Jewish settlers live in a tightly guarded enclave in the heart of the city of more than 200,000 Palestinians, a persistent source of tensions.

Since October, 34 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese have been killed in a spate of Palestinian stabbing, shooting and car ramming attacks targeting Israeli civilians and security forces.

During that time, 214 Palestinians have also been killed, some two-thirds of them while carrying out attacks and the rest in clashes with troops, Israeli officials say.