WarSclerotic

New anti-terror measures, hospitals on emergency footing ready for long terror haul, DEBKAfile, October 13, 2015

Medical services on terror alert in Jerusalem

After the first shooting in the current wave of Palestinian terror, the Health Ministry Tuesday, Oct. 13, put Israeli hospitals on emergency footing for the potential contingency of multiple casualties. Medical and auxiliary staff and supply centers were put on a state of preparedness. Hospitals in Jerusalem and other parts of the country are already facing a rise in emergency admissions as a result of terrorist attacks.

The security cabinet Tuesday approved a series of anti-terror measures, while warning that the end of the terrorist offensive was not yet in sight and it would take time for the new measures to take effect.

The families of five killer-terrorists were to be notified that their homes are listed for demolition. They were given 48 hours to appeal to decision before Israel’s High Court. The order was cleared with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. It was also decided to deploy IDF troops in Israeli cities to boost security and backup for the police. Partial shutdowns is to be imposed on Palestinian residential districts and villages in Jerusalem, where some  80 percent of the terrorists live, with check posts installed to monitor and control their entries and exits.

These measures were introduced shortly after three Israelis were killed, 22 were injured in Jerusalem by three terrorists from the same Palestinian Jebel Mukaber city neighborhood, which has a long history of terror. Armed with a gun and a knife, two terrorists tried to commandeer a bus a bus in the Armon Hanatziv district of Jerusalem, killing one Israeli and injuring 16, at least six seriously. One of the pair was shot dead, the second injured.

This was the first terrorist shooting attack in the current wave of violence. One of the killers was on the payroll of Bezek, Israel’s biggest telecom company.

In downtown Jerusalem, within minutes, a Palestinian ran down a group of pedestrians waiting at the Malchei Israel bus stop. He then jumped out of the car and struck his victims with a cleaver – continuing to strike even after he was shot by a local security guard. He killed 60-year old Rabbi Yeshayahu and injured three injured victims before he was shot dead.

Earlier, five Israelis were injured in two stabbing attacks carried out by a single terrorist in the town of Raanana north of Tel Aviv. He was overpowered by a civilian with a pepper gun and a selfie stick before police shot him dead.

After the Jerusalem attacks, police spokesmen admitted for the first time that they must have been synchronized and deliberately set up, finally abandoning the “lone wolf” theory attributed hitherto by Israeli officials to the current wave of terror.

Jerusalem’s two highway links – Rtes 1 and 443 – were meanwhile briefly shut to traffic in both directions as security forces swept for terrorist cars suspected of mingling with the intercity traffic.

DEBKAfile reported Monday.

The Palestinian knifing spree in Jerusalem Monday, Oct. 12, the day after an Israeli Arab from Umm al-Fham mowed down, then knifed, four Israelis in central Israel, puts the Palestinians on the same bloody course as Israeli Arabs, who launched an anti-Israel general strike Tuesday.

The day began at the Lions Gate, Border Guards police stopped a Palestinian who acted suspiciously. He pulled out a knife and stabbed one of the police men. The blade glanced off his body armor and the terrorist was shot dead.

At noon, a female terrorist inflicted moderate injuries on another two Border Guards officers opposite National Police Headquarters in northern Jerusalem. She was stopped by gun shots and seriously hurt.

A short time later, further north at Pisgat Zeev, two terrorists worked a street in tandem. They knocked a 13-year old Israeli boy off his bike and stabbed him. He is fighting for his life at Hadassah hospital on Mt. Scopus. The terrorist’s partner attacked a second Israeli, inflicting major knife wounds. Police at the scene stopped the rampage by shooting. One was killed.

The Umm al-Fahm assailant, Ali Riyadh Ahmed Ziwad, 20, who had to be restrained by police and passersby, Sunday night, assumed an air of surprised innocence after his arrest. “It was just a traffic accident,” he said, after running over, then critically injuring a 19-year old Israeli girl with a knife and stabbing three others.

He went into an act that is typical of the Palestinian tactic of assuming the role of victim after committing terrorist outrages.

Leaders of the Israeli Arab community (roughly one-tenth of Israel’s population) including its elected members of parliament embark on a general strike Tuesday, Oct. 13, followed Wednesday by a grandstand performance by Arab MKs at Al Aqsa, accompanied by a flock of Israeli and international camera crews.

They will have plenty of microphones to proclaim how badly they are treated and, above all, to continue to spread totally unproven falsehoods about Israeli desecrations of the Muslim Mosque of Al Aqsa, which has provided the Palestinians with their most evocative and unifying emblem for most of the past century.

Seventy-nine years ago, on April 19, 1936 – when Facebook, television and an Israel state were far in the future – the Arab High Command of Palestine declared a general strike which swiftly escalated into terrorist attacks against Jews and the British and evolved into the Great Arab Revolt.

Then, too, the rallying cry was “the Mosque is in danger!” for triggering the order to “burn a thousand buildings in Tel Aviv.” By the time it was over in 1939, 600 Jews, 200 British officials and 5,000 Arabs were dead. Many of the last group died in internecine tribal feuds.

The same rallying cry has ever since fired Palestinian campaigns of terror. The “Al Aqsa Intidafa” called by Yasser Arafat on Oct. 1, 2000, which saw the first intensive use of suicide attacks for terror, cost the lives of 1,178 Israelis and 50 foreigners, injured 8,022 civilians.

The Palestinians lost 3,333 dead and 30,000 injured – many self-inflicted.

No one can tell how the latest Israeli Arab strike will develop. Their leaders are doing their utmost to inflame passions and have already incited the first Israeli Arab stabbing attack in tune with Palestinian terrorists.

Israeli Arab leaders looks as though they have the bit between their teeth and are trying to use the weakness of the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to set the pace of events for the Palestinians as well.
The Israeli government is trying to pour oil on these turbulent waters, turning to the slow-moving legislative process as a means of fighting terror, while beefing up police forces, who are barely able to keep pace with the slashing knives.

Officials and reporters still insist on the absence of a controlling hand behind the violence, despite the evidence of an unfolding stage-by-scale escalation. The policeman injured at Lions Gate Monday told reporters from his hospital bed that, while on duty at various sectors, he had traced systematic organization behind the stabbings;the knife terrorists kept on coming out at a steady, controlled pace, he said.

Israeli strategists are not moving swiftly or unhesitatingly enough to correctly evaluate this enemy and pounce strongly on his weaknesses.