Palestinian woman joined attack ‘to atone for relationship’

Raghad Khadour leaves will saying she participated in Kiryat Arba car-ramming Friday to make amends for premarital relations with attacker

By Stuart Winer

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18 September 2016, 8:42 am

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Stuart Winer is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.

The scene of an apparent car ramming attack outside the Kiryat Arba settlement near the West Bank city of Hebron on September 16, 2016. (Judea and Samaria Hatzalah)

A Palestinian woman who took part in a car-ramming attack that injured three Israeli teenagers last week left a note stating her motive: to atone for her premarital relationship with the driver of the vehicle.

Raghad Khadour, 20, detailed her reasons for joining her boyfriend — who drove a pickup truck on Friday into a group of Israelis waiting at a bus stop outside the Kiryat Arba settlement in the West Bank — in a written testament, Arabic media sources said.

The driver, identified as Firas al-Birawi Khadour, was killed when IDF soldiers guarding the site opened fire on the car. Raghad Khadour was seriously injured.

Inside the suspects’ truck, IDF soldiers also found a knife, the army said. The two were residents of the nearby village of Bani Na’im.

According to the Palestinian Ma’an news agency, the two were engaged to be married.

Raghad Kadour’s sister Majd Khadour was killed when she carried out a similar car-ramming attack at the same junction in June.

The IDF deployed an additional infantry battalion to the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday evening, following two days of attacks against soldiers and civilians, the army said.

The decision to reinforce the flashpoint locale with the Kfir Brigade’s Shimshon Battalion was made “in accordance with situation assessments following recent terror attacks,” the IDF said in a statement.

Five attacks on Friday and Saturday — the car-ramming, three stabbings, and a rock throwing — caught many Israelis by surprise, as the violence that marked 2015 and early 2016 appeared to have waned in recent months, and raised fears that regular attacks could return.

The Hebron area, where Palestinians, Israeli settlers and soldiers live in close proximity, has been a frequent scene of clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians, as well as terror attacks by Palestinian assailants.

In the past year, Israel saw a wave of so-called “lone wolf” Palestinian attacks, which claimed the lives of 35 Israelis and four foreign nationals since October 2015. Over 200 Palestinians have also been killed in the past year, with the Israeli army and police saying that most of those killed were attackers or involved in clashes with security forces.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.