Israel Attack: Israel Searches for Assailants in Ax Rampage (Published 2022) (2024)

TEL AVIV — Israeli forces were conducting a large-scale search on Friday for two Palestinians suspected of killing three Israelis the night before in an attack that further fueled tensions that have been building for more than a month.

Two attackers, at least one of them armed with an ax, killed three people and wounded several others in the predominantly ultra-Orthodox town of Elad in central Israel on Thursday night, according to witnesses and an Israeli defense official.

On Friday night, Israeli officials said that one of the victims had driven the two attackers to Elad, unaware of their murderous plans.

Oren Ben-Yiftah, 35, a father of six from Lod, Israel, had given the men a ride, according to two defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The attackers killed him in his car, and then went on to attack the others.

The police said that they were searching for a vehicle seen fleeing the scene of the attack.

“We are investing a huge amount of intelligence and operational effort,” the Israel Police commissioner, Kobi Shabtai, said on Friday, “to track down their escape route.”

The violence erupted on Israeli Independence Day, a national holiday. But many Palestinians commemorate the day as what they call the “nakba” or “catastrophe.”

The killings on Thursday brought the death toll to 19 from a wave of Arab attacks since late March — the worst spate of killings in years, outside of an all-out war. Israel has responded with a series of raids in the occupied West Bank and nearly 30 Palestinians have been killed in the violence, according to local media reports. Most of them were involved in attacks or confrontations with Israeli forces.

Israeli-Palestinian tensions have been heightened by repeated outbreaks of violence at Al Aqsa Mosque compound — the holiest site in Jerusalem for Muslims and for Jews, who revere it as the Temple Mount, the site of two ancient Jewish temples. It is a frequent crucible of violence that can quickly escalate into a much broader conflagration.

Israel and Hamas fought an 11-day war a year ago, fed largely by disputes surrounding the same holy site. But both sides have signaled over the past month that they want to avoid another war.

Despite worries of another clash at the mosque compound on Thursday, it was relatively calm there. Nonetheless, the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank; and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that dominates the Gaza Strip, issued strident statements denouncing some Israeli police action during the day.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack in Elad, which was near an Independence Day gathering with hundreds of participants. It was not immediately clear whether the gathering was the target of the attack.

A Hamas spokesman praised the attack as “a brave and heroic act” and “a natural response to the violations of the occupation against the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque.”

On Saturday, Yehya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, had warned that any further raids by the Israeli police inside the mosque compound would prompt a response. In a fiery speech, he urged members of Israel’s Arab minority to “get your cleavers, axes or knives ready.”

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the attack.

The Israeli police said late Thursday that they had set up checkpoints along several roads and that officers in a helicopter had been deployed to search for the vehicle that was seen fleeing from the attack site in Elad.

The authorities said that they were searching for two suspects, ages 19 and 20, from a village near the West Bank town of Jenin. Several other assailants in the recent wave of attacks have also come from the Jenin area, and Israeli forces have been conducting arrest raids in and around the town that have erupted into gunfights at times.

An Israeli defense official said that the searches on Friday were focusing on Israeli territory and that forces were on alert in case the same assailants attempted to strike again. Unlike in previous attacks, the authorities published the names and photos of the suspects for fear that they would try to pose as Israelis, the official added.

Israeli defense and political officials say they are holding the militant group Hamas responsible for the ax attack in Israel on Thursday, even though they have no information indicating that the two suspects have direct ties to the group.

Like the other assailants in a recent series of attacks, the two suspects appear to be so-called “lone wolves,” officials said, inspired by militant groups, if not directed by them.

Days before the attack in Elad, Israel, the Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar urged Palestinians on Saturday to “get your cleavers, axes or knives ready.”

Israeli officials said they believe that this speech directly incited the two Palestinian suspects to carry out the attack. At least one of the assailants used an ax, according to witnesses and the police.

Hamas has not claimed responsibility for the attack but a spokesman praised it as “a brave and heroic act.”

As in the earlier attacks that killed 16 people over the last month and a half, the suspects in the ax attack on Thursday were not directly connected to a particular militant group, according to an Israeli defense official familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The suspects had no criminal record and Israeli intelligence had no information connecting them to Hamas or any other group, the official said.

Such attacks — involving a limited number of people, not under any chain of command and not tied to an organization — are very difficult for intelligence organizations to intercept before they happen, the official said.

Israeli defense and intelligence officials said that in each of the attacks they had no early warning or information about the intent to carry out the operation.

The defense official gave much weight to a broad public campaign that Hamas and other Palestinian organizations are waging on social media against what they consider to be offensive Israeli actions at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in Islam and a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

Encouraged by Hamas, Palestinian protesters at the mosque compound have tried to prevent visits by Israeli Jews during the hours set for non-Muslim visitors and tourists, and have thrown stones and shot fireworks at the Israeli security forces stationed at the edges of the compound.

The police response — including with sponge-covered bullets, sound grenades, tear gas and arrests — has stoked Palestinian anger.

A Hamas spokesman described the attack in Elad on Thursday as “a natural response to the violations of the occupation against the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque.”

Some Palestinians have also been worried that visits by ultranationalist Israelis to the compound, which have increased in recent years, and the allowance of quiet Jewish prayer, upending a decades-old convention prohibiting it, are part of a gradual effort to undermine Muslim access to the site.

Israeli officials say there has been no change in the longstanding arrangements at the site.

The ax attack in Elad, Israel, left three men in their 30s and 40s dead, and their 16 children fatherless.

The victims were identified in the Israeli media as Boaz Gol, 49, and Yonatan Havakuk, 44, residents of Elad who each had five children, and Oren Ben-Yiftah, 35, a father of six who lived in Lod.

Mr. Ben-Yiftah was a deliveryman and a driver, the news channel N12 reported.

He had unwittingly given the attackers a ride to Elad on Thursday night, according to two Israeli defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The attackers killed him in his car, and then went on to attack the others.

The three people they killed were buried Friday.

At Mr. Ben-Yiftah’s funeral, his twin brother cried out, “Oren, don’t go, take me instead,” the news site Ynet reported.

“I pray and my soul is on fire,” Mr. Ben-Yiftah’s widow said outside their home, Ynet reported.

Family members of Mr. Havakuk, a car mechanic, said that his six-year-old son was present when his father was attacked, another news site, Walla, reported. Mr. Havakuk had gone outside to search for his son when he was attacked, a neighbor said.

The boy then ran home to report that his father had been killed, his family members told Ynet. He said that Mr. Havakuk had struggled with the attackers, allowing others to flee to safety.

As the mayor of Elad, Yisrael Porush, put it at Mr. Havakuk’s funeral: “You were murdered by an Arab only because you were a Jew. You protected your only son. You struggled with the terrorists and saved other people.”

His daughter, Adele, also addressed her father: “Every morning when we got up you would ask us ‘Did you open the morning with a smile?’” Haaretz reported.

According to his brother, Aharon, “He used to fix people’s cars, and didn’t always agree to take payment even though he had worked several hours on the car,” Ynet reported.

Mr. Gol also worked at a garage, as a car electrician, according to Walla. He was on his way to a Torah lesson when he was attacked, Ynet reported.

Before his funeral, at a gathering near his home, his widow, Galit, asked, “Now you are all with me, but who will be with me in a month? At the bar mitzvahs? At the children’s weddings?” Ynet reported.

“We all need to be united, the entire Jewish people,” Haim Ov, the rabbi at the synagogue that Mr. Gol attended, said in his eulogy. “The flower of our neighborhood is gone. All of you, unite.”

Mr. Gol’s oldest son, Or Haim, said: “Father is gone. How did this happen?”

— Jonathan Rosen

Even after a month and a half of violence including deadly attacks by Arab assailants in four cities across Israel, this latest one hit hard.

The brutality of Thursday night’s ax rampage in the quiet, ultra-Orthodox town of Elad in central Israel elicited public outrage and calls from leading commentators for Israel’s government to exact a price — not just from the perpetrators, but from Yehya Sinwar, the Palestinian militant leader of Hamas in Gaza whose toxic rhetoric is widely viewed as having instigated the bloodshed.

Days before the attack, amid heightened tensions over repeated clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at the Aqsa Mosque compound, the holiest site in Jerusalem for Muslims and for Jews, Mr. Sinwar called on Arabs to “get your cleavers, axes or knives ready.”

While Hamas has not claimed responsibility for the attack, Hamas praised it as “brave and heroic.”

“There can be no restraint after this,” wrote Ben Caspit, a prominent political analyst, in Friday’s Maariv newspaper. “Sinwar has to know that he has placed himself at the top of the list of wanted men. He crossed the line and there is no way back.”

Shimon Shiffer, a veteran political columnist for the popular, mainstream Yediot Ahronot newspaper, called for Mr. Sinwar’s assassination, writing on Friday, “First and foremost, Yahya Sinwar should be declared a dead man walking.”

The attack prompted widespread condemnation, both domestically and abroad, including from the Palestinian Authority, a political rival of Hamas that exercises limited control over parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“Killing Palestinian and Israeli civilians only exacerbates the situation while we all strive to achieve stability and prevent escalation,” Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president, said in a statement. He also warned Jewish settlers and others not to use this incident as an excuse to carry out attacks on Palestinians.

Tor Wennesland, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, wrote on Twitter that he was “appalled” by it, adding, “It is deplorable that Hamas and others continue to glorify and encourage such attacks, which undermine the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis.”

No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the attack in Elad and no direct link was immediately established between the assailants and Hamas. Some of the recent attacks, which have killed 19 people since late March, were carried out by Arab citizens of Israel who were inspired by the Islamic State. Others have been carried out by so-called lone wolves not affiliated with any political or militant faction.

But for many Israelis the recent surge in violence represents a failure of the government’s policy toward Gaza.

In an effort to maintain calm after an 11-day air war a year ago, Israel has allowed thousands of Palestinian residents of Gaza to come to work in Israel daily, along with other economic inducements. Some Israelis are calling for the government to cancel or curtail the Israeli work permits in an effort to punish Hamas.

“We need to deal with the climate of encouraging terrorists,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “So when Sinwar calls on Palestinians to take butcher knives and kill Israelis, we have to respond by suspending measures intended to alleviate the economic conditions in Gaza, such as allowing almost 30,000 workers to cross daily into Israel.”

Such an action could risk another military escalation at a delicate time for Israel’s fragile governing coalition, which is made up of eight parties with clashing agendas from the political left, right and center, and includes, for the first time, a small Islamist party.

The government has already lost its majority in Parliament and could face efforts by the opposition to bring about its collapse after Parliament returns from recess on Sunday.

The attack in Elad, Israel, on Thursday came after several weeks of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and days after a Palestinian militant leader urged Arabs to “get your cleavers, axes or knives ready” in response to police interventions at the site.

The Aqsa Mosque is one of the holiest sites in Islam and a symbol of Palestinian nationalism. The area is known as the Temple Mount to Jews, the site of two ancient temples and the holiest place in Judaism.

Clashes broke out there repeatedly during the recent holy month of Ramadan, as Palestinians attempted to block what they feared were efforts to undermine Muslim access to and oversight over the site, and the Israeli police mounted what they said were counterterrorism efforts to keep the site safe and accessible to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

The Israeli authorities say there has been no change in longstanding arrangements at the site, nor are there plans to change them. However, in recent months the Israeli police have regularly allowed quiet Jewish prayer at the site, upending a decades-old convention prohibiting it and angering Palestinians.

During the recent violence, Palestinians have typically thrown stones and shot off fireworks at police, while the police have fired sponge-covered bullets and tear gas.

On Saturday, Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, had warned that any further police raids inside the compound would prompt a response from the group and urged Arab residents of Israel to “get your cleavers, axes or knives ready.”

Tensions had been expected at the site on Thursday, Israel’s Independence Day, because some ultranationalist groups had called for Israelis to enter the compound carrying Israeli flags in an assertion of Israeli sovereignty over the site. The Aqsa Mosque lies in East Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its capital and most of the world considers occupied.

But the tensions at the site on Thursday were in fact lower than in recent weeks, barring a brief sequence of scuffles that lasted less than five minutes.

The police instructed Israeli visitors not to display Israeli flags, and confiscated at least one flag after an Israeli woman tried to unfurl it on the mosque grounds.

Violence broke out briefly at about 7:50 a.m., when a Palestinian man blocked the path of a group of Israeli visitors, video showed. The man was quickly arrested during a brief scuffle, and the police formed a loose cordon between Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

Two minutes later, another scuffle broke out between the police and Palestinians, during which Palestinians threw four plastic chairs, and a group of Palestinians ran into the main mosque on the site and barricaded themselves inside. Over the next three minutes, several blasts could be heard, but it was unclear whether these were shots fired by police or fireworks set off by Palestinians.

The police later said the Palestinians threw stones and fireworks, though none were visible in the video at that time.

Police officers briefly opened one of the mosque doors and stood inside the threshold for less than a minute. But the mood calmed within five minutes, and dozens of Muslims prayed throughout the morning on the terrace outside the main mosque.

Despite the relative calm, the reaction from Palestinian leaders was strident.

The Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry called the police actions at the site “an official Israeli declaration of a religious war that would set the entire region on fire.”

Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, later released a statement calling it “a serious escalation and a direct provocation and foreshadowed an all-out explosion.”

The surge in terrorist attacks in Israel, the deadliest wave of violence since 2016, has been framed by Palestinian parties and militant groups as a logical consequence of the entrenchment of Israel’s 55-year occupation of the West Bank, of Israel’s control over sensitive religious sites in Jerusalem, and of the dwindling commitment from some key Arab leaders to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The attackers’ diverse backgrounds, however, have left both Palestinian and Israeli analysts and officials uncertain about the relationship between the attacks, the motivations of the attackers and the timing of their attacks.

Prior to the attack in Elad on Thursday, there had been several attacks involving Arab assailants who had killed 16 people, including two Arab police officers and two Ukrainians. But beyond their lethal outcomes, the episodes have not fit easily within a simple narrative.

Two of the attacks — in Tel Aviv and Bnei Brak — were carried out by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank. While praised by several Palestinian movements, no group has formally claimed responsibility for them.

Two earlier attacks were carried out by three members of Israel’s Arab minority who had known sympathies for the Islamic State, the extremist group that has no ties to the Palestinian national movement and that claimed responsibility, perhaps opportunistically, for one incident but not the other.

While the lethal outcome of the first attack, on March 22, may have inspired the others to follow suit, a senior Israeli military officer said there was no evidence that any of them were masterminded by a major Palestinian group, let alone by the same network. Analysts also noted that the attackers in the first two incidents had no ideological connection to the latest two.