Ha’aretz reported the attacker wasn’t a Palestinian terrorist – he was a 36-year-old Jewish resident of Kiryat Ata with a criminal background who stabbed the 23-year-old because he mistook that 23-year-old Jew for an Arab. Not for a specific Arab who had previously wronged him, not for a known Palestinian terrorist, not for a person known to be risky. He was admitted in moderate condition, with stab wounds to his back.
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The attacker is now beingheld in police custody, whilst the victim was taken to a local hospital with a stab wound in his upper torso.
The attack is just the latest in a series of of incidents in the occupied East Jerusalem and Israel, and is symptomatic of rising tensions in the troubled region.
An Israeli youth stabbed another man believing him to be Palestinian only to discover he was a fellow Israeli Jew.
Eight Israelis have died in a string of stabbings, shootings and the stoning of a vehicle, while 29 Palestinians – including 12 identified by Israel as attackers – have been killed in the last two weeks. A few minutes later, another Palestinian rammed his auto into a bus stop in the centre of Jerusalem before getting out and knifing people on Jerusalem’s Machei Israeli street.
The victim is believed to have been moderately injured in the attack.
Shaked noted that there has recently been a sharp rise in the number of calls to the police hotline about suspected attacks, though most turn out to be false alarms.
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Uriel Razkan was in a auto park near an Ikea store in Kiryat Ata when he was attacked on Tuesday morning.
