Palestinian teen with a razor blade arrested in Hebron

Border guards arrested a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday night after finding a razor blade hidden on his person, police said.

The 17-year-old was walking through a checkpoint near the Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site when he “aroused the suspicions” of the officers stationed there.

They pulled him aside and searched him more thoroughly, finding a razor blade tucked in his clothes, “with which he planned — according to assessments — to carry out a terror attack,” police said in a statement.

“The suspect was arrested for further investigation by security forces,” the statement said.

The arrest came a day after a Palestinian terrorist broke into a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank with a butcher’s knife, stabbed to death three people and seriously wounded a fourth at a Shabbat dinner, where the family was celebrating the birth of a grandchild.

Israeli security forces were put on high alert as escalating tension on the Temple Mount threatened greater unrest and violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Since metal detectors were installed at the site, there have been near-daily protests against them in Jerusalem. Five Arab residents of East Jerusalem have been killed during clashes with police.

The metal detectors were added after three Arab Israeli terrorists shot dead two Druze Israeli police officers just outside the Temple Mount on July 14, using guns that had been earlier smuggled into and hidden in the holy site.

The new security arrangements were condemned by the Waqf, the Jordanian trust that oversees administrative issues on the Temple Mount, as a unilateral action designed to impose greater Israeli control over the compound. The Israeli government said the detectors were a security measure whose necessity was self-evident, rather than a change to the status quo.