The Israeli military prepped the family home of a Palestinian terrorist for demolition Sunday, a day after he killed an Israeli man near a West Bank settlement.
Dramatic security camera video showed the assailant firing his assault rifle outside a grocery before a security guard rammed him with his truck and pinned him to the ground. An off-duty military officer then opened fire and killed the assailant, later identified as Mohammed Jaaberi, 35.
The attack took place between Hebron, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, and Kiryat Arba, a nearby settlement. Jaaberi was from Hebron.
The military said Sunday it arrested one of Jaaberi’s brothers and mapped out the family home in a first step toward eventual demolition.
Saturday’s attack was part of an ongoing escalation, with 2022 on course to be the deadliest year in the West Bank since the United Nations started monitoring fatalities in 2005. It came just three days before Israel holds its fifth election in under four years.
While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the central issue of the campaign, a rise in Palestinian attacks tends to help right-wing parties that advocate harsh measures against Palestinians.
No Palestinian militant group has claimed Jaabari as one of its members, though celebrations erupted in Hebron after news of the attack spread.
Elsewhere in the West Bank on Sunday, the Israeli military said a Palestinian driver attempted to ram a car into Israeli soldiers standing at bus stops along a highway east of Jerusalem near the Dead Sea. Paramedics said they treated five people with mild to moderate injuries. The army said a police officer and civilian shot the driver, who was critically injured and later died in hospital.
More than 130 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year. The fighting has surged since a series of Palestinian attacks killed 19 people in Israel in the spring. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.