Palestinian, 14, sentenced to 12 years for stabbing
2 other teens jailed for a different attack in Jerusalem; woman sentenced to 11 years for attempted bombing
Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Jerusalem District Court on Thursday sentenced a Palestinian minor to 12 years behind bars for a stabbing attack in the capital last year that injured two Israeli civilians.
The 14-year-old from East Jerusalem was convicted earlier this year on two counts of attempted murder for the October 2015 knife attack, in which he and his cousin critically injured a 12-year-old boy and a 25-year-old man.
The teenage assailant was 13 when he carried out the attack along with his 15-year-old cousin, who was shot dead by security forces responding at the scene.
According to the indictment filed in May, the court rejected the defense presented by the teen’s attorneys that the cousins had no intention of murdering the Israelis, but rather had simply wanted to “scare the Jews.”
The judges determined that the cousins went on the stabbing spree in order to “help Hamas and become martyrs.” Still, they took into account the defendant’s apology and the fact that his elder cousin had stabbed the two victims.
In a closed-door hearing in September, the teen apologized to his victims and expressed remorse for the attack.
The court on Monday also ordered the teen to pay NIS 80,000 ($21,000) in compensation to the adult victim and NIS 100,000 to the boy.
The 14-year-old was the youngest Palestinian to be convicted by an Israeli civilian court in the current round of terrorism and violence.
Early last month, Israeli lawmakers approved jailing children as young as 12 convicted of “terrorist offenses,” following repeated attacks by Palestinian minors on civilians and security forces.
The district court on Monday also sentenced two other Palestinian minors from East Jerusalem to 11 years in jail for stabbing an ultra-Orthodox teen outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate.
According to the indictment, the teens — aged 14 and 16 from East Jerusalem’s Shuafat neighborhood — attacked a group of Jewish worshipers who were returning home from the Western Wall.
A day after the attack, one of the stabbers turned himself. Security forces had launched a manhunt for the assailants, who were caught on security camera footage carrying out the stabbing.
A 17-year-old recent immigrant from the US was lightly wounded in the attack.
The court on Monday also sentenced a Palestinian woman from East Jerusalem to an 11-year prison term for detonating an explosive device at a checkpoint outside the capital last year.
Asra Jabas, 31, approached officers guarding the checkpoint, near Maale Adumim, yelled “Allahu Akbar” and blew up a gas balloon in her car.
Following the October 2015 attack, the Shin Bet security service said that Jabas was found to be carrying handwritten notes expressing support for Palestinian “martyrs.” She was indicted on one count of attempted murder by the Jerusalem District Court earlier this year.
Jabas lightly injured herself and one police officer in the blast.
A year of Palestinian terrorism and violence has seen 36 Israelis, two Americans and an Eritrean national killed in stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks. According to AFP figures, some 238 Palestinians, a Jordanian and a Sudanese migrant have also been killed, most of them in the course of carrying out attacks, Israel says, and many of the others in clashes with troops in the West Bank and at the Gaza border, as well as in Israeli airstrikes in the Strip.
