The Israeli Palestinian Conflict

Two terrorist attacks were carried out this past week: an attack in Elad where the terrorists used an axe and a knife (three civilians murdered and four wounded) and a stabbing attack at the Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem in which a Border Police fighter was wounded. An attempted terrorist attack in Tekoa was prevented. The Palestinians were enraged when Jews were allowed to enter the Temple Mount compound. A Hamas delegation visited Russia and met with the deputy foreign minister and the Grand Mufti of Russia. After the IDF began a military exercise on May 9, 2022, the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah raised their level of alert in preparation for a possible confrontation with Israel. Read more...

On April 29, 2022, two Palestinians carried out a shooting attack at the entrance to Ariel, killing the security guard. They came from the nearby village of Salfit and were captured a short time later. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) praised the attack. The night of the final Friday of Ramadan and the Eid al-Fitr prayer passed relatively quietly on the Temple Mount. Israeli security forces continued carrying out counterterrorism activities in Judea and Samaria. The events of the Iranian-declared World Jerusalem Day, marked on the last Friday of Ramadan, were held with growing tension on the Temple Mount in the background, along with propaganda and incitement to violence fomented by Hamas and the PIJ in Judea and Samaria, which threatened to attack Israel. A delegation of the Hamas leadership led by Khalil al-Haya paid a visit to Tehran, invited by the secretariat of the Iranian international committee for the support of the Palestinian intifada. Read more...

The week during which Israel celebrated Passover, the Muslims Ramadan and the Christians Easter was fraught with tension in east Jerusalem, especially on the Temple Mount after Palestinians tried to prevent Jewish worshippers from conducting prayers at the site. Given the tension in east Jerusalem, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired five rockets at Israel, four of them landing inside Israel, one of them damaging a house in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. In addition, a rocket was launched from Lebanon at the western Galilee, apparently by Palestinians in south Lebanon. On April 15, 2022, a young woman carried out a stabbing attack in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, wounding one man. In Judea and Samaria an exceptionally large number of rocks and Molotov cocktails were thrown at Israeli vehicles driving on the roads. Read more...

This past week terrorist attacks continued. The most serious was a shooting attack on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv on April 7, 2022, in which three Israelis were killed. The shooter, like the perpetrator of the attack in Bnei Brak, was an operative of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military-terrorist wing, from the Jenin area. There were also two stabbing attacks, one at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, on April 10, 2022, and the other in the southern coastal city of Ashqelon on April 12, 2022. Both terrorists were shot and killed. Israel carried out counterterrorism activities in a number of locations in Judea and Samaria, seizing weapons. Despite the terrorist attacks, Israel had not cancelled measures put in place for the Palestinians for the Muslim religious month of Ramadan, with the exception of restrictions placed on the residents of the Jenin area. Read more...