A Palestinian Authority Arab terrorist held an orthodox Jewish passenger at knifepoint before releasing him and escaping near Beitar Illit, on the western edge of Gush Etzion, around 8 p.m. (1 p.m. EDT) Sunday night. Watch the video here.

The death threat and apparent hostage attempt follows three murders and two attempted murders by Palestinian Authority terrorists in the past four weeks.

The attacker was an illegal worker who had boarded the No. 148 bus in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, and demanded that the bus driver let him off at an illegal stop before the IDF checkpoint along the security fence that borders Judea and Samaria.

The driver refused, and the illegal worker drew a knife and held it a passenger’s throat, taking him hostage. The terrorist then proved he was serious in his death  threat and cut off the “payos” (sidelocks) of his victim, prompting the driver to answer the attacker’s demand and stop the bus.

The attacker then left his hostage and jumped off the bus. The army is searching the area, and a helicopter reportedly has joined the search.

A military spokeswoman told The Jewish Press the attacker took the knife with him.

Earlier in the day, rock-throwing Arabs injured one passenger near Beitar Illit, a large Haredi Jewish city, and shares with Maaleh Adumim the distinction of being the largest cities in Judea and Samaria.

Israeli media have almost totally ignored Sunday’s night’s death threat, which apparently was not considered serious since no one was killed or hurt.

The lack of reportage is part of a mass media agenda to downplay terrorist attacks. Evidence of the agenda was the coverage of last week’s tractor terrorist and the previous week’s murder of retired IDF soldier Col. Sraya Ofer in the Jordan Valley.

In both instances, the major Israeli newspapers and the Voice of Israel radio network took pains to point out that it was not certain that the attacks were related to terror, even though an IDF spokeswoman told The Jewish Press shortly after the tractor terrorist attack that the driver “was a terrorist” who tried to run over a soldier.

Terror is not good for the peace talks.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama have repeatedly said that Palestinian Authority  chairman Mahmoud Abbas  has put a stop to terror, a non-fact that agenda-oriented journalists repeat like parrots. Just to prove the point, one of the more astute reporters covering the U.S. State Dept. totally ignored the tractor terror incident and the murder of Ofer at the State Dept.’s daily briefing, while asking why the Obama administration does not stop Israel from announcing more building projects for Jews in Judea and Samaria.

The reporters never even mention daily rock-throwing and Molotov cocktail attacks, which endangers the lives of thousands of Israeli drivers and passengers who travel the roads in Judea and Samaria to Jerusalem and metropolitan Tel Aviv.

Shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday, when people are returning home from work, a Palestinian Authority terrorist in the area of Shechem hurled a firebomb at an Israeli driver, whose car was not hit.

The “tractor terrorist” who was shot dead by IDF soldiers at an army base Thursday night tried to run over a soldier, an IDF spokeswoman told The Jewish Press.

The driver “tried to run over the soldier several times,” chasing after him as he fled and smashing into several vehicles until soldiers nearby emptied an entire magazine of bullets, killing the driver almost immediately. A concrete block, put there to protect the soldiers is what prevented them from being run over.

The spokeswoman could not confirm or deny reports that the driver was unarmed, but when asked if the army was certain the driver was a terrorist, she replied in the affirmative and stated that he tried to murder at least one soldier.The military is investigating the incident.

The terrorist was identified as Younis al-Obaidi Radaydeh from the Ramallah area village of Beit Hanina. He had arrived at the Rama base near Ramallah around 7:15 p.m. (12:15 p.m. EDT), and the soldier at the gate asked him for his identification papers. While he was examining them, the tractor terrorist smashed through the gate and aimed at a soldier who was standing nearby. Radaydeh managed to drive 150 meters into the base.

The gate fell on the soldier who had been examining documents, causing him light injuries. He was treated at the scene and did not require hospitalization.

While Palestinian Authority  sources said that the parents of the driver had received a notice from Israeli authorities that their house was scheduled to be demolished, there is no confirmation of that claim.

Voice of Israel radio reported that the terrorist’s brother also was a tractor terrorist, Marei Radaydeh, who was killed while trying to run over cars, including a police car, in Jerusalem in 2009.

In 2008 and 2009, Arabs used tractors in terror attacks inside Jerusalem, killing three Jews and wounding several others.

Five Palestinian Authority Arabs have been arrested so far in the search for the killers of Shraya Ofer last night in the Jordan Valley terror attack.

At least two Arabs were involved in the terror attack.

They’ve been brought into interrogation by the Shabak.

The man who was bludgeoned to death, apparently by two Palestinian Authority terrorists, has been identified as a retired IDF colonel Sariya (שריה) Ofer.

Ofer was the founder of the IAF special forces unit “Shaldag”.

He is also the nephew of Sammy Ofer, the business magnate and philanthropist, who owned, among other things, the ZIM shipping company and the Israel Corporation.

According to Sariya’s wife, Monique, at around 1 AM, the couple heard noises outside their house. When her husband out to check, he was attacked by two terrorists.

His wife managed to flee the house, crawling through bushes and barbed wire fence until she reached the road, suffering cuts.

While in the house, she managed to call a friend who alerted the police.

According to the wife’s daughter, the terrorists were searching with flashlights for the wife, as she was escaping.

At 8 AM, a 54 year old, Arab resident of Natzrat Ilit rammed into the gate of the Ramat David Air Force base in northern Israel.

The driver had indicated to the guards that he had planned to make a U-Turn, and then ran full speed into the gate, and suffered light injuries as a result.

He was taken to the hospital, and police are investigating if it was an accident or attempted terror attack.

Two weeks ago, Palestinian Authority Arabs rammed through the Ben-Gurion Airport security gate.

Talks between Palestinians and Israelis will resume on Monday evening, the first such formal deliberations in almost three years.

Meetings between top negotiators will take place Monday night and Tuesday in Washington, the U.S. State Department said in a statement. Secretary of State John Kerry has been pressing the sides for a resumption and has visited the region six times since assuming his post in February.

The Israeli side will be represented by Tsipi Livni, the justice minister, and Yitzhak Molcho, the national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Saeb Erekat, the top Palestinian negotiator, and Mohammed Shtayyeh, who directs the Palestinian Economic Council and who has ministerial status, will represent the Palestinian Authority.

The State Department release said that the talks would at first focus on the procedure for the talks, but added that the basis for negotiations is in place.

“As Secretary Kerry announced on July 19 in Amman, Jordan, the Israelis and Palestinians had reached agreement on the basis for resuming direct final status negotiations,” it said. It did not elaborate what the basis is.

“The meetings in Washington will mark the beginning of these talks,” it said. “They will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural workplan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months.”

“Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point. We are grateful for their leadership,” Kerry added in the statement.

The announcement came after Israel promised to release 104 Palestinian prisoners with Jewish blood on their hands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet met Sunday to debate the prisoner release and to approve the resumption of talks. The 22-member cabinet approved the release by a vote of 13 in favor, seven against and two abstentions.

Likud MK and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon urged ministers to vote against the release, branding it “a diplomatic mistake, a moral mistake.”

It is still not clear whether the released prisoners will include 14 Israeli Arabs—which the PA made clear would be a deal breaker. Sources in Jerusalem told Kol Israel there has been no Israeli commitment on that issue.

Among the Israeli Arab prisoners whose release the PA is demanding are the four Arabs who killed three Israeli soldiers with pitchforks on the infamous “Pitchforks Night” in the early ’90s, the terrorist who threw a firebomb into the car belonging to the Moses family, murdering the mother Ofra and her son Tal, and the terrorist who threw a firebomb at a bus, murdering Rachel Weiss, mother of three children, and soldier David Delaroza, in the 1980s.

There were conflicting reports in recent days over whether the sides had achieved a basis for the talks, or whether negotiators would convene only to prepare the basis for talks.

Israeli and Palestinian talks have been suspended since October 2010, when the Palestinians walked out over Israel’s refusal to extend a 10-month settlement construction freeze.
JTA content was used in this report.

Retired Tel Aviv District Court Judge Nissim Yeshaya has announced he is quitting as an appeals court judge, two days after he publicly stated in court, “There are some girls who enjoy being raped.”

He made the comment during an appeal by a 19-year-old Israeli who was raped by Arabs at the age of 13 and was appealing a Defense Ministry decision not to recognize the attack as an act of terrorism.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Supreme Court President Asher Grunis spoke with Judge Yeshaya about his outburst and accepted his resignation.

“The judge announced his resignation, and this is the correct and only step in this grave incident,” Livni said.

“This is the only way to restore public trust in the judicial system,” she added. “Every judge needs to know that his being examined, correctly, under a magnifying glass and that he must conduct himself correctly as one who is guarding justice and who determines the fate of others.

“We are not speaking only about a comment but about a view that women have been struggling with for years that throws on them the guilt as victims of rape. This kind of expression from a judge is liable unintentionally to give twisted minds legitimacy to rape.

Judges also need to know that when a woman says, “No,” she means ‘No.’”

The terrorists who are building up men and material resources in the chaos of today’s Egyptian Sinai struck again this morning. Two GRAD rockets were fired into – and struck – the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat.

Memo to those lacking historical, geographic or political background: Eilat is not and never has been claimed by Palestinian Arab terror apologists as “occupied territory”… other than by the many extremists who see all of Israel as the territory that is occupied. The readers of the Lebanese Al Manar news website for instance, are seeing a report at this moment headlined “Rockets Hit Occupied Town of Eilat“; Al Manar is a mouthpiece of Hezbollah. The semi-respectable Palestinian Maan News Agency has called Eilat occupied too, though never in the English language.

Times of Israel is reporting that one of the two missiles crashed into a residential neighborhood; the other in an open area on Eilat’s outskirts. Reuters says both hit open areas. Ynet says there were three rockets, and two landed in residential areas. Israel’s Army Radio, which is broadcast throughout the country, is quoted saying that a rocket “had also hit the nearby Jordanian city of Aqaba, but a spokesman for the Jordanian Civil Defense denied the suggestion.”

Fortunately, and this is a matter of divine intervention and human failure, no injuries are reported, at least  not so far. Damage is said to be light.

The IDF’s assessment, hardly surprising and certainly not for the first time, is that the attack on Eilat was made from the nearby Sinai Peninsula. The situation there is chaotic and dangerous, and growing steadily worse; we have written numerous times about Sinai’s spiral downwards into terrorist-driven anarchy [here, here, here and hereamong numerous other posts]. As a matter of consistent policy, the Egyptian authorities always respond to media inquiries with firm denials that rockets were fired from Egyptian territory; this morning they did the same again.

Israel’s security authorities saw today’s attack coming. An Iron Dome anti-missile defense battery has been stationed near Eilat for the past two weeks; there are ongoing intelligence assessments that warned of an act of terrorism like this morning’s. The system however was not utilized today, presumably because the Iron Dome controller knows to compute the expected damage in real time and to avoid firing if it is reasonable to do that.

The IDF created the Eilat Regional Brigade this past December to provide military protection, to the extent such a thing is doable against a jihadist enemy operating under the cover of a neighboring country’s government. The most recent rocket attack on Eilat’s civilian population (the only kind that it has) was an especially worrying one in August 2012; those which came before it are detailed in this Wikipedia entry.

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