Palestinian man slams car into concrete barrier near military post

A Palestinian driver slammed his car Saturday into a concrete barrier at a hitchhiking post popular with IDF soldiers near a military post in the southern West Bank.

None of the soldiers standing at the spot was hurt but the Palestinian man suffered moderate injuries, Israel Radio reported, without specifying the exact location. It was not immediately clear if the incident was an accident or an attempted attack.

A similar incident occurred Friday when a Palestinian man drove his car into a concrete barrier near two IDF soldiers as they stood at a bus stop near an army base south of Nablus.

The man in that incident was lightly wounded and taken for questioning as initial suspicions were that he attempted to run over the soldiers in a terrorist attack. The IDF said later Friday that a joint IDF, Shin Bet and police investigation concluded that the incident was a car accident.

Car attacks by Palestinian terrorists have killed five people since mid-October. Last month, two Palestinian terrorists entered a Jerusalem synagogue and attacked worshipers there with cleavers and a gun, leaving four worshipers and a policeman dead.

Also on Friday, a Palestinian man injured seven people by throwing acid at them as their family of six stopped their car to pick up a hitchhiker, near a checkpoint between the Gush Etzion settlement of Beitar Illit and the Palestinian village of Husan, southwest of Jerusalem.

Israeli soldiers at the scene where a Palestinian man attacked a family of six with acid in Gush Etzion on December 12, 2014. (Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The mother, father, their three young daughters and a cousin were taken to hospital with light injuries from the chemical substance. The hitchhiker, identified as Moshe Claude Kamon, was also wounded and transferred to hospital for treatment.

The attacks come during a period of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and a wave of unrest in the West Bank and in Arab East Jerusalem.

These were compounded this week by the death of Palestinian Authority official Ziad Abu Ein in a clash with Israeli troops on Wednesday. Israeli officials have said a postmortem — attended by Palestinian and Jordanian physicians — showed Abu Ein died of a heart attack, possibly caused by the stress of the situation as well as a preexisting heart condition. Palestinians have disputed this claim, saying he died after being struck by soldiers and inhaling tear gas.

Abu Ein’s death has enraged the PA and is seen as a potentially perilous development, carrying with it the prospect of an escalation of violence.