Security forces conduct widespread arrest raid, map home of Bnei Brak killer.
https://www.jpost.com/-By ANNA AHRONHEIM, TOVAH LAZAROFF
Border Police officers carry the coffin of their comrade Shirel Aboukrat, who was killed in a terror attack in Hadera on March 27, 2022.(photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/MAARIV)
Israeli security forces carried out a wave of arrests in the West Bank and mapped the home of the terrorist behind the deadly attack in Bnei Brak overnight on Tuesday.
Forces from the IDF, Shin Bet and Israel Police conducted a widespread arrest campaign throughout the West Bank in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, Bethlehem, Kedum, Ramallah, Marda, Ya’bad, and villages south of Bethlehem.
Clashes broke out between troops and Palestinians during the arrests.
Among those arrested was the brother of the attacker- 27 year-old Dia Hamarsha from the village of Ya’bad in the northern West Bank near Jenin. He was jailed for six months in 2015 for dealing in illegal firearms and affiliation with a terrorist group and had worked illegally at a Bnei Brak construction site.
At least 20 other people including other relatives were arrested in Yabad and interrogated as security services look into if Hamarsha had any accomplices and how he came to be in possession of the M-16 rifle used in the attack.
According to KAN public broadcaster, Hamarsha’s father said that had he seen any warning signs that his son was about to commit an attack he would not have let him leave their home.
His father said that while he was shown videos from the scene of the attack, including by security forces, “I cannot believe it.”
“I did not notice anything unusual in him, he said.”No one wants his son to die. We are people who love life, and want other people to live.”
At around 8.00 PM Hamarsha opened fire on civilians in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, killing four people.
In a video that later circulated on social media, Hamarsha was seen with his M-16 shooting at bystanders and a man driving his car on a residential street. In another video, a man was seen running into a building after Hamarsha’s rifle jammed.
The victims were later identified as Yaakov Shalom, a Bnei Brak resident, and father of five who was shot while driving his car and Rabbi Avishai Yehezkeli, a yeshiva teacher and father of two who was shot while he was out with his 2 year-old son for an evening stroll.
Two other victims, 38-year-old Victor Sorokopot, and 23-year-old Dimitri Mitrik, were workers from Ukraine who were shot at the entrance of a supermarket.
Hamarsha was later shot dead by a police officer who arrived at the scene on a motorcycle and engaged the shooter in a firefight. The officer, 32-year-old Arab Christian Amir Khouri, was evacuated to Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in critical condition and died from his wounds soon after, making him the fifth victim.
The funerals of the victims are set to take place throughout the day on Wednesday.
The attack came just days after two Israeli-Arabs from the town of Umm el-Fahm opened fire in the city of Hadera, killing two 19-year-old Border Police officers in an attack claimed by the Islamic State.
It also came a week after an Israeli-Bedouin killed four civilians in a stabbing and vehicular ramming attack in the southern city of Beersheba. Both the Hadera and Beersheba attacks are believed to be ISIS related.
The deaths mark one of the highest terror-related casualty tolls in a week period since the second intifada, in which over 1,000 lives were lost from 2000-2005. It is also the first significant security challenge Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has faced since he took office last June.
In a video statement released after the Bnei Brakc attack, Bennett said that Israel is “currently facing a new wave of terrorism.”.
“After a period of quiet, there is a violent eruption by those who want to destroy us, those who want to hurt us at any price, whose hatred of Jews, of the State of Israel, drives them crazy,” Bennett said in a short video address Wednesday morning.
“They are prepared to die – so that we will not live in peace,” he added.
Israel has already pushed to thwart what it feared would be outbreaks of Palestinian violence, similar to what sparked a Gaza war last May and a wave of ethnic Jewish-Arab riots within sovereign Israel.
“What we witnessed less than a year ago in Operation Guardians of the Walls, the terrorism and the violence, from within Israel and inside Israel, was the first sign,” Bennett said.
“This is a great and complex challenge for the IDF, the ISA and the Israel Police that requires the security establishment to be creative and for us to adapt ourselves to the new threat and read the tell-tale signs of lone individuals, sometimes without organizational affiliation, and to be in control on the ground in order to thwart terrorism even before it happens,” he explained.
“The security forces of the State of Israel are the best in the world. They are up to the task and, as in the previous waves, we will prevail this time as well,” he added.
He sent his condolences to the families of the victims, wished a speedy recovery to the wounded and thanked the civilians and police officers who helped end the attacks for their heroism.
“I stand by the civilians and police officers who shot the terrorists in the various locations. I have spoken with some of them and thanked them on behalf of all of us. These are heroes of Israel who, thanks to their courage, have saved lives,” he said.
“We face a challenging period. We have experience in dealing with terrorism, from the very beginning of Zionism. They did not break us then and they will not break us now,” Bennett said.
“The secret of our existence is the mutual responsibility among us and our determination to maintain the home that we have built – at any price,” he explained, adding that, “Citizens of Israel, we will prevail this time as well.”
Bennett, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 held security consultations last night with the Defense Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Public Security Minister, the IDF Chief-of-Staff, the Director of the ISA, the Israel Police Inspector General, the Director of the National Security Council, the Prime Minister’s Military Secretary, the head of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, and the head of the IDF Operations Directorate.
Following the spate of attacks, security forces were placed on heightened alert and troops were reinforced in the West Bank with four additional battalions in addition to the four battalions that had already been deployed following the terror attack in Hadera. Infantry troops and special forces were also sent to reinforce the Gaza Division along the border fence of the Gaza Strip.
Bennett plans to convene the security cabinet on Wednesday to discuss the latest terror attack. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is expected to visit King Abdullah in Jordan on Wednesday to talk about ways to prevent further violence.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that Israel needs many more police officers in the field “and that we will make sure that this will happen.”
He called on Israelis to unite in the face of this latest terror wave which he said was designed not just to take innocent lives but to tear apart the fabric of Israeli society by sowing divisiveness and hatred.
“Terror’s purpose is not only to murder innocents but also to set us against each other in hatred and anger so that Israeli society will be undermined and dismantled from within through an exchange of accusations that would lead to internal violence,” Lapid said.
“Terrorists want to see violent riots on the streets of Israel,” he added.
“We must not allow terrorists to determine our policies” or to “tear us apart from within,” Lapid said.
Israeli resilience is the best weapon against terror, Lapid said, at a joint press conference with the visiting Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg.
“Our strength is built on the alliances we have, and on our commitment to shared values. Israel and Austria share a deep friendship, and you and I are determined to deepen and strengthen it even further,” Lapid said.
He also referenced Monday’s Negev Summit, in which Israel hosted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the foreign ministers from four Arab countries: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt.
Lapid told Schallenberg that “our meeting today, like the Negev Summit earlier this week ..is the best response to terror.
“Peace and friendship are the alternatives to violence and chaos,” Lapid said.
“We choose peace through strength. This is the choice of the strong,” he added.
In a rare statement, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the terrorist attack late on Tuesday, Israeli media reported.
“The killing of Israeli and Palestinian civilians will only lead to a deterioration of the situation ahead of Ramadan,” the PA head said. “We are trying to obtain some stability.”
Abbas also warned, however, against using the attack as justification for settler violence against Palestinians. “This circle of violence shows true, lasting peace is the only solution to maintaining the security and stability for our peoples.”
Hamas meanwhile, praised the attack saying in a statement that “responding to the crimes and terrorism of the occupation is a legitimate right for all our people until the occupation is removed from our land.”
Calling it a “blessed and heroic operation against the Zionist occupation soldiers in the so-called ‘Tel Aviv’ area,” Hamas said “that all the heroic operations carried out by our Palestinian people, in every inch of our occupied land, comes in the context of the natural and legitimate response to the terrorism of the occupation and its escalating crimes against our land, our people and our sanctities.”
“We have repeatedly warned the occupation of the consequences of escalating its violations and crimes, as our Palestinian people will not remain passive in front of it, and will confront its terrorism by all means, and they will protect their sanctuary, the farthest corner and the entire occupied lands, and he will defend it with comprehensive resistance, which will continue to deter the occupation, and to restrain its aggression, until its departure from our land,” the terror group added.