After several Israelis were wounded in series of Palestinian terrorist attacks on Friday, the Palestinian Authority condemned the killings of two assailants by Israeli security forces, calling them “a crime.”
In the first of four incidents, a Jordanian man attempted to stab an Israeli Border Police office near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. The man was shot and killed after officers saw him advancing with a knife drawn, police said. Three blades were found in his possession.
![Three knives found in the possession of a Jordanian man who was fatally shot while attempting to carry out an attack in Jerusalem. [Photo: Israel Police]](http://www.thetower.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/WhatsApp-Image-2016-09-16-at-13.42.49.jpeg)
Less than an hour later, two Palestinians drove into a civilian bus stop near Kiryat Arba in the West Bank and were consequently shot by security forces, one fatally. Three Israeli teenagers — two boys and one girl — were injured in the attack, according to officials.
Later in the day, a bus driver was lightly injured after rocks and bottles filled with paint were thrown at his vehicle as he traveled from Jerusalem to Ma’ale Adumim in the West Bank, police said.
Shortly afterwards, a Palestinian assailant slashed the face of a 19-year-old soldier in the West Bank city of Hebron, Israel’s emergency medical service said. The attacker was shot and killed.
More than 300 Palestinian terrorist attacks have taken place over the past year, killing 40 people and wounding more than 520, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reacted to the violence by condemning Israel for shooting the Palestinian attackers, calling it “a crime and an execution.”
In the past, Abbas has refused to condemn multiple terror attacks—including the recent killing of a 13-year-old Israeli-American girl in her bedroom—and has paid visits to terrorists’ families, telling one group of mothers, “your sons are martyrs.” The PA also pays salaries to Palestinians who carry out attacks against Israelis, which Israeli officials say act as an economic incentive for terrorism.
Attacks against Israeli civilians have broad support in Palestinian society. A poll conducted over the first three months of 2016 found that over 60 percent of Palestinians approve of “armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel.”
3 civilians injured in ramming attack. #IDF opened fire,one terrorist was killed another wounded. Wounded evacuated pic.twitter.com/lD4zIg2nWx
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) September 16, 2016
[Photo: Hadas Parush / Flash90]