JERUSALEM: A Palestinian fatally stabbed an Israeli-American man near the entrance to a mall in the occupied West Bank on Sunday before being shot and wounded at the end of a brief foot chase, officials said.
The man killed, Ari Fuld, was a right-wing activist who has appeared regularly on television, but a police spokesman said there was no indication he was targeted for that reason.
Fuld, 45, was a father of four who lived in the Israeli settlement of Efrat, near the mall where he was stabbed.
The Palestinian attacker was 17-year-old Khalil Jabareen, from the village of Yatta in the southern West Bank, according to Palestinian security sources. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Jabareen was moderately wounded.
The incident took place at the Gush Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, according to Israel’s military, which provided the details of the stabbing.
Surveillance footage shared on news sites and social media showed the assailant approaching an older man near the mall entrance and stabbing him several times.
He is then pursued by civilians and shot nearby. There is regular friction between Israelis and Palestinians at the junction, which lies near a major Israeli settlement bloc and has been the site of numerous lone-wolf Palestinian attacks.
Fuld created a Facebook page called “Israel Defence Page” and was a hardline defender of Israel in his television appearances.
During last year’s march by right-wing Israelis through east Jerusalem’s Old City to commemorate 50 years since Israel seized control of it in the Six-Day War, Fuld said it was a “miraculous day” for Jews. “Today we are celebrating the unification of Jerusalem,” he said.
US ambassador to Israel David Friedman said on Twitter that “America grieves as one of its citizens was brutally murdered by a Palestinian terrorist.” “Ari Fuld was a passionate defender of Israel & an American patriot.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “in the name of every citizen of Israel, I send my condolences to the family of Ari Fuld, who was murdered today in a terrorist attack”.
Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2018
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