2017 Jerusalem Light Rail stabbing

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2017 Jerusalem Light Rail stabbing
Part of Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Israel outline jerusalem.png
Red pog.svg
Location Tzahal Square, Jerusalem
Coordinates 31°46′44″N35°13′29″E / 31.77889°N 35.22472°E / 31.77889; 35.22472
Date14 April 2017;7 years ago (2017-04-14)
12:50 (UTC+03:00)
Attack type
Stabbing
Weapons Kitchen knife
Deaths1
Injured2
VictimsTrain passengers
MotiveUnder investigation

The 2017 Jerusalem Light Rail stabbing was a stabbing attack and suspected act of terrorism that occurred on Good Friday, [1] 14 April 2017, on Jerusalem Light Rail's car. In the attack, a 20 year old British student was stabbed to death by Jamil Tamimi, a Palestinian man. Two others, including a pregnant woman, were injured in the incident. [2] The attacker was arrested and was deemed competent to stand trial.

Contents

Background

Stabbing attacks were rare in Israel in 2017, although there was a spate of them in the fall of 2015 and early 2016. [3] The attack took place as crowds of pilgrims from around Israel and the world gathered in the center of Jerusalem to celebrate Passover and Good Friday. [3]

Attack

The attack occurred at about 1:00 pm 14 April 2017, as a knife-wielding man stabbed a 21 year old British exchange student. An off-duty police officer riding the light rail pulled an emergency brake and tackled the perpetrator, who was then arrested. [4]

According to Israel's domestic security service, Shin Bet, the attacker was known to the authorities and the attack may have also involved a "suicide by soldier" motivation, [5] as attributed to other incidents in the last 18 months, [6] "This is yet another case of a Palestinian suffering from personal, mental or moral distress choosing to commit an act of terror to escape his problems." [7]

After his arrest, the perpetrator reportedly told investigators that he stabbed Bladon because he wanted the soldier standing beside her to kill him. [8] [9]

Victim

Hannah Bladon, a 20-year-old religion, theology and archaeology student in Israel on an exchange program from the University of Birmingham was fatally injured and died in ambulance en route to Hadassah Medical Center. [5] [10] She had been returning from volunteering in an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeological excavation in the Western Wall Tunnel, [11] and was standing next to the attacker after giving up her seat for a woman with a baby. [12] [13]

Suspect

The accused, Jamil Tamimi (57) a Palestinian Arab from the Ras al-Amud neighborhood of East Jerusalem who was known to security services; according to security services the accused was convicted of molesting his daughter in 2011. [14] [15] [7] [16] [17] [18] The accused had been admitted in the past to Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center, and a day before the attack he voluntarily admitted himself to a mental health treatment center in northern Israel from which he was expelled following a violent assault on a person. [5] [19] [20] On the morning of the attack he spoke to one of his sons who told him that the entire family wanted no contacted with him. He reportedly told investigators he had "nothing left to lose", and that he had purchased a knife in the Old City, before boarding a train close to Damascus Gate. [17] Following the attack, the accused was sent for a mental examination by a psychiatrist. [21] Psychiatric examiners judged him mentally fit to stand trial, [17] and he was subsequently charged with premeditated murder. [22] [14] [23]

Trial and sentencing

Tamimi confessed to having committed the murder, acknowledged his mental illness, apologized, and entered a plea-bargain under which he will serve 18 years in prison. [24] Hanna Bladon's family was "outraged" by the lenient sentence, arguing that the murderer ought to have been incarcerated for life. [25] In January 2019, the Jerusalem District Court formally sentenced him to 18 years in prison. [26]

On 26 January 2022, Tamimi was found dead in his cell at the Nitzan Prison. [27]

Impact

In response to this and other recent lone wolf attack, Israeli police have revamped their anti-terrorism tactics, increasing monitoring of social media, improving the intercommunication of mobile devices, and giving security agencies to instantly trace phone calls made such devices. [28]

Response

See also

Related Research Articles

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On 10 February 2010, Palestinian Authority police officer Muhammad Hatib stabbed Druze Israeli soldier Ihab Khatib to death as the latter was sitting in a jeep at a traffic light. The attack was considered part of an "emerging trend" at the time, involving assaults on Israelis by members of the Palestinian Authority security services.

The 2011 Tel Aviv nightclub attack was a combined vehicular assault and stabbing attack carried out at 01:40 (GMT+2) 29 August 2011 in which a Palestinian attacker stole an Israeli taxi cab and rammed it into a police checkpoint guarding the popular nightclub, Haoman 17, in Tel Aviv which was filled with 2,000 Israeli teenagers. After crashing into the checkpoint, the attacker jumped out of the vehicle and began stabbing people. Four civilians, four police officers, and also perpetrator were injured in the attack. The perpetrator was living illegally in Israel at the time of the attack.

Kristine Luken was an American Christian who was murdered in a Palestinian terrorist attack on December 18, 2010, while hiking with her friend Kay Wilson in the hills of Jerusalem. Despite multiple stab wounds, Wilson survived the attack; Luken's body was later found by Israeli police, bound and stabbed to death. The Palestinian terror cell that perpetrated the attack were later arrested. During the investigation, the cell members also confessed to the murder of Neta Sorek, whose stabbed body had been found earlier that year near the Beit Jimal Monastery in the Judean Hills. The Palestinian terrorists were convicted of a series of violent crimes.

The 2013 Tapuah Junction stabbing occurred on 30 April, in which an armed Israeli settler, Evyatar Borovsky, was stabbed, disarmed and then, according to some witnesses, shot with his own weapon at a bus stop in the northern West Bank by a Palestinian resident of Tulkarem. The Israeli police described the attacker as a "Palestinian terrorist". The perpetrator was identified as Salam As'ad Zaghal, who had recently been released from 3.5 years in jail for planting explosives. The stabbing was praised by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, its military wing, and its Islamist offshoot the Palestinian Mujahideen movement, and by Zaghal's family. Jewish settlers in the West Bank waged a series of violent reprisal attacks against Palestinian targets in the West Bank, and an Israeli outpost was later named in the victim's honor.

The 2014 Alon Shvut stabbing attack occurred on 10 November 2014, when Palestinian Maher al-Hashlamun first attempted to run his vehicle into a crowd waiting at the bus/hitch-hiking station at the entrance to the Israeli settlement of Alon Shvut, in the Gush Etzion section of the occupied West Bank, then, when the car was stopped by a bollard, got out and attacked with a knife, killing a young woman and wounding two others. The attack occurred four hours after the killing of Sergeant Almog Shiloni in Tel Aviv and took place at the same bus/hitch-hiking stop where three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered in June 2014.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lions' Gate stabbings</span> 2015 incident in Jerusalem, Israel

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On 8 March 2016, a 21-year-old Palestinian man from Qalqilya killed an American tourist and wounded ten civilians in a stabbing spree in Jaffa Port, Tel Aviv, Israel. The attacker was shot dead by the police after a chase along the beach promenade.

On 30 June 2016, a 17-year-old Palestinian male broke into a home in the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba and stabbed to death Hallel Yaffa Ariel a thirteen year old Israeli-American citizen in her bedroom. The attacker was then fatally shot by security guards. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed "incitement-driven terrorists" while the U.S. State Department condemned the "outrageous terrorist attack".

On 9 October 2016 in Jerusalem, Musbah Abu Sbaih, a Hamas militant shot 8 people from a car near the Ammunition Hill light rail stop, killing two and wounding six. The police gave chase, Shaih was shot and killed while shooting at pursuing police.

On 16 June 2017, two Palestinian men opened fire on Israeli police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem, injuring four of them. An additional attacker stabbed a policewoman, she was critically injured, and later died in hospital. All three attackers were shot and killed by the Israeli authorities.

On 14 July 2017, three Arab-Israeli men left the Temple Mount, and opened fire on Israeli border police officers stationed near the Gate of the Tribes which is close to the Lions' Gate. Two Israeli border police officers were killed and two more were injured in the attack. All three attackers were shot and killed by Israeli police after fleeing back into the complex.

The Halamish attack, or the Halamish massacre was a terrorist attack on a Jewish family in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Halamish, that took place on 21 July 2017, in which three Israelis were stabbed to death and one severely wounded. The victims of the attack were Yosef Salomon, his daughter Chaya and son Elad, the three who were murdered in the attack, and Tova Salomon, Yosef's wife, who was injured but survived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2017 Temple Mount crisis</span>

The 2017 Temple Mount crisis was a period of violent tensions related to the Temple Mount, which began on 14 July 2017, after a shooting incident in the complex in which Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli police officers. Following the attack, Israeli authorities installed metal detectors at the entrance to the Mount in a step that caused large Palestinian protests and was severely criticized by Palestinian leaders, the Arab League, and other Muslim leaders, on the basis that it constituted a change in the "status quo" of the Temple Mount entry restrictions.

On 2 August 2017, a 19-year old Palestinian teen critically injured an Israeli civilian with a knife at a local supermarket in the city of Yavne, located in the Central District of Israel. The attacker was subsequently arrested after being captured by civilians who were at the spot. Police confirmed the attack was an act of terrorism.

On October 4, 2017, Reuven Shmerling (70), a Jewish man from Elkana, was stabbed and bludgeoned to death in a warehouse owned by his son in an industrial zone of the Arab-Israeli city of Kfar Qasim in an attack carried out by two young Palestinian men who had entered Israel illegally. The two attackers wanted to avenge the death of a man from their town who was shot and killed by Israeli police as he was a part of a group of three who killed an Israeli policewoman at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate in February 2016.

Ari Fuld, an American-Israeli who lived in the Israeli settlement of Efrat, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian at the Gush Etzion Junction in the West Bank on 16 September 2018.

On March 22, 2022, four people were killed and two more were injured during a stabbing and vehicle-ramming attack by an Islamic State supporter in Beersheba, Israel.

References

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