Troops raid home of terrorist behind deadly stabbing
Palestinian report comes after soldiers set up perimeter around southern West Bank city of Yatta, home of Khalil Jabarin, who killed Israeli Ari Fuld in Sunday attack
Israeli forces on Monday raided the family home of a Palestinian teen who stabbed an Israeli man to death in a West Bank terror attack the day before.
According to reports in Palestinian media, troops descended on the home of Khalil Jabarin in the city of Yatta, near Hebron, in a pre-dawn raid Monday.
The Israel Defense Forces later confirmed that it conducted the operation.
“IDF soldiers, working with forces from the Shin Bet security service and Border Police, mapped out the home of the terrorist who yesterday murdered Ari Fuld — may his memory be blessed — in the village of Yatta,” the army said in a statement.
In addition to measuring the home in order to prepare to demolish it, family members of the terrorist were also questioned by Shin Bet officers, according to a spokesperson for the organization.
The military said no arrests were made.
On Sunday morning Jabarin, 17, stabbed to death Israeli Ari Fuld, 45, in a terror attack at a shopping center frequented by Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank south of Jerusalem.
Fuld, a dual Israeli and US citizen and father of four, lived in the nearby settlement of Efrat and was well known in media and Israel advocacy circles for his online activism. His death was roundly condemned across the Israeli political spectrum and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly also spoke out against violence in reaction to the terror attack.
Israel generally razes the homes of Palestinian terrorists who commit attacks in which people are killed or seriously injured. Though controversial, Jerusalem defends the measure as an important deterrent to stop terror attack.
Troops had earlier set up a perimeter around Yatta, according to Israeli reports.
The IDF said earlier that Israeli security forces planned to arrest members of the terrorist’s family in order to further investigate what information they had about his plans before he carried out the attack.
Some 65,000 Palestinians live in Yatta, and a number of terror attacks in recent years have been carried out by residents of the city.
According to Israeli authorities, shortly before noon on Sunday, Jabarin stabbed Fuld in the back, as they stood on the sidewalk outside the shopping mall at the Etzion junction.
Despite his wounds, Fuld chased and shot his attacker before collapsing to the ground. He was declared dead after being rushed to a Jerusalem hospital.
Jabarin was shot by Fuld and another armed civilian at the scene. He was taken to Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus in moderate condition with multiple gunshot wounds, hospital officials said.
No terror group claimed the attack, but Hamas praised it. In contrast, Abbas told a group of visiting Israeli ex-politicians that he was against violence in reaction to the stabbing, according to former justice minister Yossi Beilin, who attended the meeting.
A senior Palestinian Authority official based in the southern West Bank said Jabarin’s father had warned PA security forces that his son had gone missing Sunday morning, after he fought with him about going to school.
“The father and his son got into a fight this morning. The father wanted his son to go to school, but he refused and eventually the father beat him,” the official, who asked not to be named, told The Times of Israel. “The son then ran away and the father told the security forces that his son went missing. The security forces tried to find him, but they weren’t able to before [the stabbing].”
When asked if the PA security forces informed their Israeli counterparts that Jabarin had gone missing, the official said that the father had only informed them that his son had disappeared and not that he was planning to carry out an attack.
“All we knew was that the boy had run away. So we did not inform the Israeli side,” the Palestinian official said. “We did not know he was planning to carry out a stabbing.”
Jabarin’s mother, however, went to the nearby Meitar checkpoint in the southern West Bank and told soldiers, at approximately the same time the stabbing took place, that her son planned to commit an attack, according to the Israeli army.
She did not provide specific details about where or when she believed Jabarin would carry out an attack, the army said.
Adam Rasgon contributed to this report.
