The attack was similar to one carried out two weeks ago at another tram stop in occupied East Jerusalem. On that occasion a three-month old baby and an Ecuadorian woman were killed when a Palestinian drove into a crowd of people waiting at the stop.
Aviv Hovav, of the Israeli rescue service, was one of the first people on the scene yesterday. He said traffic lights had been knocked over and a lot of damage caused. “We saw five people on the side of the road who had been hit by the car. One was critically injured and two seriously wounded. Then it became clear to us there was another focal point with more wounded. Three of them were seriously wounded.”
The driver of the car was identified as Ibrahim al-Aqari from the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem. The militant Hamas group applauded the attack. “We praise this heroic operation,” a spokesman said. “We call for more such operations.” Al-Aqari’s brother, Musa al-Aqari, spent 19 years in an Israeli jail for kidnapping and murdering a border policeman in 1992. He was released and expelled to Turkey as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas in 2011.
The Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary compound with The Dome of the Rock
Israel’s Minister of Public Security, Yitzhak Aharanovich, applauded the security forces for their swift response. “A terrorist who harms citizens deserves to die,” he said. Mr Aharanovich added that he would recommend to Mr Netanyahu that the homes of people who carry out such attacks be demolished. “For everyone who harms police and civilians, their home must be destroyed,” he said. He added that it is impossible for police to stop every attack but vowed that “quiet will be restored to Jerusalem”.
Mr Netanyahu, speaking at a memorial event for Yitzhak Rabin, the former prime minister who was assassinated in 1995, called the attack “a direct result of the incitement by Abu Mazen [an alternative name for Mr Abbas] and his partners in Hamas”. He appeared to be referring to a condolence letter the Palestinian leader had sent to the family of last week’s would-be assassin. Mr Abbas wrote that he had died defending Palestinian holy sites and had gone to heaven.
Mr Netanyahu has said there will be no change to the status quo at the al-Aqsa mosque. But far-right members of the Knesset, including some from Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party, have visited the site and proposed giving Jews the legal right to pray there; and Muslim access to the mosque has been restricted, supposedly for security reasons. All this has heightened Palestinian fears about Israeli intentions.
...culled from the independent
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