By Jonathan Benedek/TPS

Jerusalem (TPS) – Chairwoman of the State Audit Committee, Member of Knesset Karin Elharar (Yesh Atid party), expressed concern at a committee session on Tuesday over the approximately fifty thousand Palestinians Authority Arabs working in Israel without legal permits.

“In the wave of terrorism plaguing us, illegals are often the terrorists,” said MK Elharar in reference to Arabs from Judea and Samaria working in pre-67 Israel illegally. “As of March, 44% of the attacks carried out within the Green Line were perpetrated by illegal workers.”

The Green Line refers to the armistice lines drawn between Israel and the Arab armies in 1949, ending Israel’s War of Independence. Israel gained control of Judea and Samaria, which are beyond the Green Line, during the Six-Day War in 1967.

IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot noted at the committee session that none of the Arabs from Judea and Samaria with legal work permits had committed terrorist attacks in recent years.

“There have not been any terrorists among those who possess work permits during the last terror wave, and I think even over the last decade as well,” Eizenkot said.

Eizenkot added that approximately 61,000 PA Arabs commute legally from Judea and Samaria to work in Israeli-controlled territories on a daily basis and about 40,000 PA Arabs work in city industrial zones. In contrast, 50,000 to 60,000 PA Arabs are employed in Israel without legal permits.

While noting that they understood the significance of the numbers, both the committee chairwoman and the chief of staff acknowledged what they felt were the legitimate concerns of illegal PA Arab workers.

“In many cases, the illegal workers infiltrate because they have no other work options and receiving a work permit is difficult and complicated,” conceded MK Elharar.

The chairwoman, however, also warned that failure to properly enforce and control the work permits just allows the problem of illegal Palestinian Authority Arab workers to continue.

Eizenkot, meanwhile, suggested that Israel adopt a balanced approach to solving the problem. “We need to create a balance between the Palestinians’ economic needs and security requirements,” he contended.

In particular, Eizenkot suggested that Israel improve the process through which Arabs in Judea and Samaria could obtain work permits in addition to facilitating more efficient access through checkpoints. Eizenkot also called for harsher penalties on those aiding, abetting, and employing illegal workers.

By Michael Bachner/TPS

Jerusalem (TPS) – Israeli police on Tuesday afternoon revealed details of an attempted attack on Jerusalem’s light rail that was foiled by security forces two weeks ago.

The suspect, 21-year-old Ali Abu-Hasan who is a Palestinian Authority student of civil engineering in Hebron, infiltrated into Israeli-controlled territory with pipe bombs and a knife. Abu-Hasan intended to carry out the attack on July 17 in what he claimed would be response to visits by Jews and non-Muslim tourists to the Temple Mount complex.

The details of the foiled attack had been under a gag order so as to prevent any interference in the investigation, which was carried out in collaboration with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). The details were published after the investigation was completed.

Abu-Hasan revealed under questioning that he had entered Israeli-controlled territory two days before his arrest by crossing through an olive grove near the Arab neighborhoods of Sur Baher and Jabel Mukaber in Jerusalem. He then changed his clothes and shaved his beard, leaving a goatee so as to blend in with the Israeli population.

The police said that the suspect prayed at a nearby mosque on the morning of July 17 and boarded a bus heading to Jaffa Street, a major Jerusalem street in the city’s center along which runs the light-rail train.

According to the investigation, Abu-Hasan decided that the light-rail would be the best target for a terror attack, since it is frequently crowded with pedestrians. Security guards noticed and became immediately suspicious of Abu-Hasan as he stood near the light-rail stop with his backpack, which contained the pipe bombs and explosives.

The light-rail security guards closed off the area and called in police bomb technicians to investigate Abu-Hasan’s backpack. They discovered three pipe-bombs tied together and dipped in rat poison with nails and screws glued onto them. Two knives and a mobile phone were also discovered in Abu-Hasan’s backpack.

Abu-Hasan claimed that he acted alone without organizational help and that he had been planning the attack for a long time. He purchased the equipment and materials needed to assemble the pipe bombs and learned about how to make them as well as to how to maximize their potential impact. He also tested the pipe bombs several times by detonating them.

Before heading to Jerusalem, the terrorist left a will in the hands of his friends at his university in Hebron, asking them to give it to his parents.

Abu-Hasan was arraigned on Tuesday at the Jerusalem Magistrates Court and has been charged with attempted murder, weapons manufacturing, and conspiracy to commit a crime. The court extended his remand until August 5.

Just two days after two Da’esh (ISIS) terrorists ritually sacrificed an elderly Catholic priest by slitting his throat on the altar of his own church as he was serving Mass, the people of France has once again bestowed the title of “Honorary Citizen” upon another cold-blooded terrorist killer.

Palestinian Authority terrorist Marwan Barghouti is the darling of the movement to create a new Arab state nestled right up against the State of Israel. He is also popular on the Palestinian Authority street, where citizens still vote for him during elections though he is sitting in a jail cell. Hamas has attempted during every parlay with Israel to free him; but he is one of the terrorist prisoners least likely to ever be released.

The leader of the Tanzim paramilitary terrorist organization, Marwan Barghouti is serving five consecutive life sentences plus 40 years for the particularly brutal murders of five Israelis. Among the dead was a 3-year-old girl.

That doesn’t include the deaths of the “hundreds of civilians, both Israelis and citizens of other states,” that he is also responsible for, said Israeli Ambassador to France Aliza Ben-Nun (Bin Nun) in an open letter published in France.

This is the eighth time since 2009 that Paris has bestowed the honor upon Barghouti. No fewer than 20 cities in France have honored the child-killer with the title of “honorary citizen,” according to the French L’Humanite newspaper.

None have invited him to come live within their municipal boundaries, however.

Ben-Nun expressed “deep shock and worry” in her letter, saying that French officials who pay tribute to Barghouti are “not only guilty of supporting terrorism but also have denied values that are cherished in both France and Israel.”

There have been repeated struggles between Israel and France over the latter’s attempts to portray Barghouti as a folk hero, including one attempt this past spring by Paris to present the killer to the world as some sort of “Nelson Mandela.”

In fact, a Paris auction house was ordered to remove a painting in which the chief of the Tanzim terrorist organization was actually presented as a Palestinian Authority version of the South African president and leader. “Nelson Mandela was also called a terrorist in the 1950s,” wrote the artist in the inscription.

But the Paris government didn’t issue the order until the auction house received a letter from the Israeli embassy, expressing disapproval of the comparison made by the artist between Mandela and Barghouti. The letter pointed out that Mandela opposed violence; Barghouti, on the other hand, is a real terrorist and a convicted killer. He is serving five consecutive life sentences plus 40 years for the heinous murders he committed.

He’s the kind of terrorist who would fit right in with the bloodthirsty murderers who slaughtered the 84-year-old priest who was celebrating Mass at the altar of his church two days ago, and who forced his fellow priest to film the event as they did so.

Perhaps that’s why France again has awarded him the honor, so close to the barbaric murder of the gentle man of God in Normandy?

Equally strangely, both chambers of the Belgian Parliament voted in May 2016 to nominate Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize. A letter was sent to the Nobel Committee in which the killer was called a “peace activist and a key figure in Palestinian-Israeli settlement.”

In terrorist-besieged Belgium, this is akin to something like the Stockholm Syndrome.

One wonders whether any of the security officials in either of these countries have considered the message being sent to the world’s terrorist community — and it is a real community, make no mistake — and how that warm welcome gets played to the budding lone wolves being recruited online.

Could be the leadership may only be ‘talking the talk’ about declaring “war on terror” for the cameras.

If so, then it looks like Brexit came just in time.

By Jonathan Benedek/TPS

A 13-year-old Israeli girl was murdered Thursday morning by an Arab terrorist who stabbed her in her bed in the community of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron.

The terrorist breached the community’s security fence just before 9 a.m. and entered the home of the Ariel family, stabbing the sleeping daughter, Hallel Yaffa, multiple times in her bed. Hallel, an eighth-grader, died of her wounds soon afterward.

The terrorist, 17-year-old Mohammed Tarayra from the nearby Arab village of Bani Na’im, east of Hebron, was killed by security forces at the scene.

A 31-year-old local security volunteer who attempted to subdue the terrorist was also stabbed, as well as shot inadvertently by Israeli security forces. His wounds are moderate to severe.

“My daughter was sleeping, calm and peaceful, and a terrorist just got into her bed and murdered her,” Hallel’s mother, Rina, told Israeli media, weeping. “I ask that everyone consider our pain, that you come to console us, come to encourage us, to say that Kiryat Arba is ours and is a place where it’s possible to live and not die, to continue with our love for the place and the land.”

“We received a call about a terror attack in Kiryat Arba, and we arrived there and saw two wounded victims, including a girl who was about 14 or 15 years old,” Magen David Adom paramedic Devorah Aviad told Tazpit Press Service (TPS). “She was very seriously wounded from a number of injuries in the center of her body.”

“Security officials saw movement on the fence in the neighborhood of Harsina, we recognized that someone passed the fence,” a security official told TPS news. “Security officials of the neighborhood arrived, recognized the terrorist next to the home and inside the house we found the girl stabbed.”

Hallel Yaffa Ariel was rushed to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem where she later died of her wounds.

The second victim, in moderate to severe condition, was transferred to the trauma center at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center where he is being treated for gunshot wounds in both the upper body and legs, the hospital announced.

Since the attack, the village of Bani Na’im has been placed under lockdown.

“In the coming hours, the IDF is preparing to carry out a full closure on the village of Bani Na’im where the terrorist who carried out the terrorist attack in Kiryat Arba came from,” the Israeli military announced. “Additionally, IDF forces are currently operating in the village and entering the house of the terrorist for the purposes of investigating.”

“We are deeply hurt and share the pain of the Ariel family,” said the local Hebron Council in a statement following the attack, placing the blame on the Palestinian Authority. “We will rise up stronger, resolute and with faith that justice will prevail.”

The victim was related to Uri Ariel, Israel’s minister of agriculture and rural development, who tweeted: “Arab terror has struck our family, but the response must be national. Dettering terrorists, redoubling building and planting in Judea and Samaria, and applying Israeli sovereignty to Area C.”

In a joint operation between the Shabak (Shin Bet – Israel’s security service) and the IDF, a member of the Tanzim-PLO terrorist organization was arrested on Thursday, according to the Shabak.

Mustafa Husam Aladin Mustafa Abu Riala, from Shechem, was involved in a number of terror attacks, including a shooting attack on IDF troops in May 2014. He had been previously been in jail in 2008-2009.

For the past few months, Abu Riala has been under protective arrest by the Palestinian Authority, to prevent the IDF from capturing and arresting him. Despite supposedly being under arrest and in a jail, Abu Riala would frequently leave the Palestinian Authority prison where he was supposedly being detained.

Israel repeatedly informed the PA security apparatus to properly detain Abu Riala.

Israeli security forces noticed Abu Riala in his home on Thursday afternoon, and arrested him before he could escape.

A 17 year old Palestinian Arab was arrested on Friday, July 10, in Jerusalem.

Israeli border guards arrested the 17-year-old who refused to stop at their direction at the Qalandiya checkpoint.

Instead of obeying the border guards, the Arab teen pulled out a knife and stepped towards an Israeli soldier stationed at the checkpoint, according to the police.

There were no injuries reported.

Qalandiya is the main checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

A 17-year-old Palestinian Authority terrorist was arrested on Thursday evening at the Raas checkpoint, north of Jerusalem, according to a Tazpit report.

Security forces at the checkpoint noticed the man’s very suspicious movement towards them. When they ordered him to stop, the terrorist pulled out a knife and continued towards the security forces. The security forces responded by brandishing their weapons towards him.

The terrorist-in-the-making then surrendered and was arrested.

During the initial interrogation, the man admitted he arrived at the checkpoint in order to stab someone in a terror attack.