Palestinian kills four Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem truck attack
By
Patrick Martin
9 January 2017
A Palestinian Arab killed four Israeli soldiers and injured another 15 on Sunday. He was shot to death after he rammed a truck at high speed into a group of soldiers alighting from a tour bus near the Old City in East Jerusalem.
The driver of the truck was identified as Fadi Ahmad Al-Qanbar, 28, of the Palestinian neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber in East Jerusalem, near the scene of the killings. The four soldiers killed, three women and a man, were identified as 2nd lieutenant Yael Yekutiel, 20, and cadets Shira Hajaj, 22, Shira Tzur, 20, and Erez Orbach, 20.
Both Israeli government officials and the US State Department immediately denounced the attack as linked to ISIS, comparing it to the truck attack on a Christmas market in Berlin last month. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters, “We know that there is a sequence of terror attacks. There definitely could be a connection between them, from France to Berlin and now Jerusalem.” Previously, however, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told CNN “there are no potential active ISIS cells here in Israel.”
There is no indication, as of yet, that al-Qanbar was affiliated with any organization, terrorist or otherwise, and no group claimed responsibility for the attack. Neighbors and friends described al-Qanbar as a family man of traditional Muslim views, married and with four children.
There were conflicting reports about whether he had served time in an Israeli prison, something that is very common among young Palestinian men in the occupied territories. A relative told Israel Radio, “We were surprised; he was not a member of Hamas or a former prisoner. He never harmed anyone or caused…