Minister says ‘best answer is expansion of settlements’ after attack in West Bank

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Israel is to build hundreds of new homes in a settlement in the occupied West Bank where a Palestinian teenager stabbed three Israelis, one of them fatally, the defence minister has said a day after the attack.



“The best answer to terrorism is the expansion of settlements,” Avigdor Lieberman tweeted on Friday, announcing 400 new housing units in the Adam settlement north of Jerusalem.

The teenage assailant climbed over a wall and snuck into the settlement on Thursday evening, the Israeli army said. He stabbed three people seemingly at random before being shot dead.

The army named the Israeli man who died as Yotam Ovadia, 31. A 58-year-old man was said to be seriously injured but stable, and a third person was lightly wounded.

The attacker was identified by Palestinian media as Mohammed Dar Youssef, 17, from the village of Kobar. The Israeli army said on Friday it had raided the village, questioned a number of his family members and suspended their work permits.

Clashes broke out between young Palestinians and soldiers firing teargas during the raid. “The rioters hurled large rocks and firebombs and rolled burning tyres at troops, who responded with riot dispersal means,” an Israeli army statement said.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa said three people were arrested. The army established a checkpoint at the edge of the village and said it was “reinforcing the defence” of Adam and other settlements.

All Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank is considered illegal by the international community. Israel rejects the widely held view that settlement expansion is one of the greatest obstacles to peace with the Palestinians.

Attacks against Israelis in the West Bank are supported by many Palestinians as pushing back against settlement growth.

The US special envoy, Jason Greenblatt, called on the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement leads the government in the West Bank, to condemn the attack.

“Yet another barbaric attack tonight. When will President Abbas and Palestinian leaders condemn the violence?” he tweeted.

There was no response from Abbas’s government, which has cut ties with the Trump administration over its stance on Israel.

Lone Palestinian attackers have carried out multiple attacks against Israelis in recent years in the West Bank, Jerusalem and elsewhere.

The incident in Adam came after a period of relative calm in the West Bank. The last attack in a West Bank settlement was in April, when a Palestinian tried to stab an Israeli with a screwdriver near a petrol station in an industrial area connected to the Maale Adumim settlement east of Jerusalem.

In Gaza, however, there has been recurrent violence between the Israeli army and Palestinian protesters, in which at least 154 Palestinians have been killed since late March.

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which rules Gaza, praised the “courageous operation” in the West Bank, without claiming responsibility for it.