Palestinian arrested after pulling knife at Jerusalem checkpoint
Man takes out weapon after being asked to show identification papers; no injuries reported
Stuart Winer is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
A knife-carrying Palestinian man was arrested Wednesday by Israeli security forces at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem, police said.
According to spokeswoman Luba Samri, the 21-year-old man drew a knife when asked to present his ID card at a checkpoint at the entrance to the Shuafat refugee camp.
Police did not say if the man attempted to use the knife.
The suspect was taken into custody unharmed, and no other injuries were reported.
He was handed over to security forces for questioning over the circumstances of the incident.
Since September 2015 there have been numerous knife attacks by Palestinians on security forces at checkpoints as part of wider increase in violence, including shooting incidents, against Israeli military personnel and civilians. In many cases security forces have thwarted the attacks by opening fire at the assailants. Dozens of Israelis and over 150 Palestinians have been killed during the attacks.
On Tuesday, troops shot and killed a suicidal Jewish man who rushed at them with a knife at a West Bank checkpoint in Hizme, north of Jerusalem.
While a number of Palestinian assailants have been said to attempt suicide by the same method, this seemed to be the first case of a Jewish Israeli taking his life by suicide via the same method.
Last week a Palestinian man was shot by IDF soldiers when he attempted to stab them outside the same northern West Bank army base where a similar incident took place the day before.
No Israelis were reported injured at the time and according to the official Palestinian Wafa news agency, the assailant was shot in the stomach. He was taken to Petah Tikva’s Beilinson Hospital in a serious condition.
The incident occurred at a bus stop outside the IDF’s Samaria Regional Brigade headquarters, near the Nablus suburb of Hawara, the army said.
A day earlier, a Palestinian, later identified as 17-year-old Amjad Maher Jaafar, attempted to stab soldiers in the same location, but was shot and critically wounded. Media reports indicated the two men were related.
Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report.
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