Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian Authority terrorist late Wednesday night after he and another terrorist firebombed an IDF checkpoint they were manning in a “pillbox” watch tower in Samaria.

The two terrorists attacked the IDF post, near the Jewish community of Einav, and soldiers shot back, killing one of the terrorists. The second terrorist was lightly wounded and was treated at a PA hospital in Tulkarm, approximately 10 miles east of Netanya.

The attack, a major escalation in Palestinian Authority terror, followed a long day of riots, firebomb and rock-throwing attacks on soldiers and motorists, especially on the north-south highway connecting Jerusalem with Kiryat Arab-Hevron. One soldier was slightly wounded by a rock and several cars sustained damage.

Tension and violence have grown since the death on Tuesday of jailed Palestinian Authority terrorist Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who was suffering from throat cancer that had quickly spread and became terminal. The Palestinian Authority accused Israel of “murdering” him by not treating him properly and immediately set the stage for an escalation in terror by shutting down schools before noon on Wednesday as a sign of mourning.

Grieving for “martyrs” usually is accompanied by comforting them with riots, rock throwing at Jews, launching rockets on civilians in southern Israel and – Wednesday night – firebombing one of those “degrading” IDF checkpoints where soldiers are on the lookout for terrorists ready to blow up Israelis in urban centers.

The terrorists who threw a firebomb at the IDF at Einav and was killed was a high-school age student, identified as Amar Nasar.

More of the same is expected on Thursday, when Hamdiyeh, who was convicted and jailed for planning a suicide bombing, will be buried in Hevron.

The escalation of terror is the “welcome mat” for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry when he visits Ramallah and Jerusalem next week.

Hours before the Palestinian Authority terrorist attack on the IDF checkpoint, U.S. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland told reporters at the daily briefing, with a straight face, that “nobody wants to see violence of any kind, either by demonstrators or by security services in response to peaceful demonstration.”

It is not quite clear what “peaceful demonstration” she was talking about since virtually all of them are accompanied by firebombing and rock-throwing, the latter which Haaretz’s Amira Hass wrote on Wednesday is the “right and duty” of PA Arabs trying to get rid of the “foreign occupier.”

Kerry will be talking about Turkey and Syria as well as his beloved “peace process,” which, unlike Israel, is all the Palestinian Authority is interested in.

One of Nuland’s choice comments in her briefing with reporters on Wednesday was a reference to “the remarks that the President made when he was on his trip, that both sides are going to have to help create an environment for peace.”

The question of what creates an environment of peace was not lost on reporters covering the State Dept. but was a bit too much for Nuland to handle.

One journalist, referring to Kassam rocket fire on Sderot Wednesday morning, asked, “Exchange of fire has resumed between Hamas and Israel. Do you think that November ceasefire has gone?”

Nuland acted as if the rocket attacks never happened, saying, “I’ve seen these reports. I’m not in a position to evaluate them one way or the other. But as you know, we considered that November ceasefire to be absolutely fundamental for everybody involved. So we’ll have to see what happens now.”

What has happened since she finished her media briefing was more rock and firebomb attacks on civilians and soldiers.

The Palestinian Authority strategy for years has been to win concessions from Israel piece by piece to create situation in Judea and Samaria similar to that in Gush Katif before the 2005 expulsion. The idea it to make life so unbearable for Jews that the IDF has no choice but to defend them – and that means killing the enemy – or surrendering the land and moving the checkpoints back to the “Auschwitz borders,” the term used by former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Abba Eban to describe the 1949 Temporary Armistice Lines that existed until the Six-Day War in 1967.

If the Palestinian Authority can get to that point, it would take only one or two missiles on Tel Aviv to push the checkpoints back to the Mediterranean Sea.

Time for a small lesson in reality twisting and shaping.

A convicted Palestinian Arab terrorist, sentenced to life imprisonment for trying to engineer a massacre in a Jerusalem cafe in 2002, died recently at the age of 62 of cancer of the throat.

As a direct result, Arab riots broke out in several parts of Israel’s prison system as well as in East Jerusalem. In addition, three rockets were fired into Israel from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The Times of Israel said that two of the Gazan missiles crashed inside Gaza’s borders, but as happens constantly with such “fell short” explosions, there are no reports of casualties among the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza, even though casualties do routinely occur in the wake of “fell shorts.” A third exploded in an open area of southern Israel’s Eshkol region, according to the IDF.

Credit was claimed by the terrorist faction called Mujahideen Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem who said it’s a protest at the death of the sick, now deceased, terrorist. Wikipedia calls this group

an armed al-Qaeda-linked group that is active in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and in the Gaza Strip. Since it emerged following the 2011 Arab Spring developments in Egypt, it has carried out attacks against civilians in Israel. The group describes violence against Jews as a religious obligation that brings its perpetrators closer to God.

The terrorist, Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, was diagnosed a week ago as being terminally ill. He died Tuesday in a bed in one of Israel’s major public hospitals, Soroka University Medical Center in Beer Sheva, where he received treatment (says the Israel Prison Service spokesperson) from some of the country’s most accomplished oncologists. Perhaps this explains why Palestinian prisoner affairs minister Issa Karakeh…

blamed Israel. “This is a serious, ugly crime committed against the prisoner Maysara due to medical negligence and reluctance to release him,” Karakeh said [source].

Surprisingly, the Palestinian minister made no comment at all - not a word – about the death a day earlier of Sami Hamdan Qishta. Qishta died on Monday of a heart attack at the age of 50 in one of the Hamas prisons in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency. Unlike the massacre-planning Abu Hadiyeh, Qishta was neither a terrorist nor even convicted. Ma’an says he was merely being held on charges “related to financial crimes,” quoting the Hamas Ministry of the Interior as its source.

The global media are roiling about the “serious, ugly” death of the terminally-ill Abu Hamdiyeh. Now try Googling for any mentions of Qishta in the news, the one who died at the hands of Hamas. And good luck.

Visit This Ongoing War.

Temple Mount in Jerusalem was closed on Sunday morning to Jews and tourists, as Arab rioters threw stones at Jews on Temple Mount as well as the Jews praying by the Kotel.

According to Reshet Bet Radio, the incident began when a 4-year-old girl had to relieve herself at the edge of the Temple Mount compound. The girl was accompanying her father, who was among the Jewish activists visiting the holy site. There are no bathroom facilities available in the area which is permissible for Jews to access, and so the father had to take his child to a secluded area.

Arab youths in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount who heard about the “offense” started throwing stones indiscriminately at all the visitors at the site. They threw stones at police and then at the large crowd of Jews praying below the Mount, at the Western Wall. No one was hurt and police forces repelled the attackers and arrested six suspects.

The child’s father told Reshet Bet he had no intention to provoke the Arabs, but absent a proper facility, he had to take care of his child as best he could.

Jewish Temple activists said that closing Temple Mount on Jewish holidays has become a predictable ritual, as Muslims incite rioters over their websites to storm the site, and Israeli police never lifts a finger to prepare for the rioters. Instead, they let the riots begin and then use them as an excuse to close off the site.

On Friday, following the morning prayers on the Temple Mount, police estimate that a hundred Arabs began rioting and throwing rocks at police officers.

In what is being considered a serious escalation,  two Molotov cocktails (firebombs) were thrown at police from within the Al-Aqsa Mosque. One policeman was lightly injured by the fire, and taken to the hospital.

Police arrested at least four people, and dispersed the rest with stun grenades.

On Saturday, Arabs threw three firebombs at a police position in Hebron, near the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

In a definite setback for their ethos, the violent Palestinian riots over the past week were mis-founded: Israeli Health Officials from the Abu-Kabir Forensic Institute announced today that Arafat Jaradat’s death last week was not the result of poisoning or physical violence against him.

Palestinian administrative detainee Arafat Jaradat’s autopsy found no evidence of poisoning or physical violence, stated a report released by the Health Ministry on Thursday.

Jaradat died on Saturday in the Megiddo Prison. The Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine continues to run tests to determine the cause of death. (Dr. Itay Gal) YNET So who can we blame for Palestinian violence? Settler violence [TM] and Price Taggers [TM]? Ooops. Seems like the Palestinians fabricated that too.

The Shai District Police found that the alleged “price tag” incident which took place at the West Bank village of Kusra was fabricated.

The police findings show that the claim, stating that six vehicles were set on fire, is untrue and that the Israeli identification card presented by one of the village residents was lost in the area a few days prior. (Itamar Fleishman, YNET). Fair readers, do not be alarmed.  There many do-gooders over at Haaretz concocting new slanderous stories as you read these very lines.

But here’s a photo of Palestinian violence below….just in case you want to remind yourself what’s really going on.

Photo: Tazpit News Agency

Visit The Muqata.

The broken ribs that Palestinian Authority prisoner Arafat Jarakat suffered were due to resuscitation efforts, Israel officials announced Thursday. Jarakat died last Saturday and the Palestinian Authority immediately claimed he was tortured to death.

An initial autopsy, in the presence of a PA doctor and legal team, revealed that there were no signs of violence on his body. The PA rejected the findings, and thousands of Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza rioted and threw firebombs and rocks at soldiers and Israeli motorists.

An update on the autopsy released by Israel on Thursday staged, “It was found that the hemorrhages and fractured ribs found during the autopsy occurred close to death and are characteristic of the resuscitation attempts that were performed on the deceased by Prison Service and MDA medical staff for 50 minutes in an effort to save his life.”

The examination of microscopic findings was made NationalCenter for Forensic Medicine Director Prof. Yehuda Hiss, Health Ministry Medical Administration Director Prof. Arnon Afek, and TelHaShomerHospital’s Pathology Institute Director Prof. Iris Barshack.

“No signs of other contusions were found. The toxicology tests were also negative,” they stated.

“There were no signs of significant change due to illness in other organs that could indicate cause of death; therefore, further tests to determine the cause will be performed.”

A senior officer in the IDF Central Command said the army is “prepared for every eventuality,” the IDF stated on its website but played down media reports of riots.

“The newspaper headlines are more dramatic than the reality in the field, even if recent months have been characterized by more significant events with a higher scale of violence,” the unnamed senior officer said. “The wave of incidents has not ended, but the intensity that we saw last weekend and during the course of recent days has quieted significantly.”

He added that the low number of casualties, without fatalities, suffered from the incidents, fulfilled the IDF’s target of maintaining calm.

The officer said that most casualties were in locations where the level of violence was particularly high, such as the incident at Rachel’s Tomb where rioters hurled improvised grenades and explosive devices at IDF forces.

The United States is appealing to Israel and the Palestinian Authority to restrain from stoking the coals as riots threaten to escalate violence throughout Israel, less than a month before President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit.

US State Dept. deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters on Monday, “We call on Israelis and Palestinians to exercise maximum restraint as the situation on the West Bank remains tense. We’re also conveying that message directly to Israeli and Palestinian officials.

“All parties should seriously consider the consequences of their actions, particularly at this very difficult moment. We urge both Palestinians and Israelis not only to refrain from provocative actions that could destabilize conditions on the ground, but to consider positive steps to reestablish trust and deescalate the current tensions.”

Ventrell said that Israel should examine its use of administrative detentions while the Palestinian Authority should not engage in “inflammatory rhetoric.”