After truck bomb attack thwarted, checkpoint closed Liberman orders closure of northern Samaria checkpoint until further notice, after PA truck headed for Jewish communities found with bomb. Arutz Sheva Staff,

Crossings Authority in Defense Ministry The truck carrying the bomb Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman ordered the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, to close until further notice the Reihan checkpoint after a bomb was discovered yesterday, Wednesday, in a PA Arab truck passing through the checkpoint.



Following the closure of the checkpoint, west of Jenin, only humanitarian cases approved by the Civil Administration will be allowed through.



Yesterday, officials discovered a powerful explosive device hidden in the roof of a PA truck that reached the checkpoint. The truck had merchandise intended for Jewish communities in the seam zone. The Arab driver was arrested.



Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman welcomed the seizure of the truck bomb and said, "The vigilance and professionalism of the crossings authority at the Defense Ministry led to the discovery of a bomb and the thwarting of a large-scale attack on the 70th Independence Day.”



"We will pursue those who planned to harm our holiday. They will not rest until we get our hands on them, "Liberman promised.





top </s> A truck rammed into a crowd of soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing at least four people and wounding 15 others, officials said, in an attack that the prime minister said was carried out by a supporter of ISIS.

Magen David Adom ambulance service said four soldiers — three women and a man — had been pronounced dead. One severely wounded person was evacuated to a hospital.

The Israel Defense Forces identified the four as: Yael Yakotiel, 20, of Givatyim; Shir Hagag, 22, of Ma'ale Adumin; Shira Tzur, 20, from Haifa; and Erez Orbach, 20, of Alon Shvut.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the scene that authorities knew the identity of the attacker, and "as much as we know, he is a supporter of the Islamic State."

Israel's national police chief, Roni Alsheikh, told reporters that the truck was driven by "an east Jerusalem Palestinian" who was killed by other soldiers after the attack. Pictures from the scene showed the truck's windscreen pockmarked with several bullet holes.

A police spokesman described the incident, at the Armon Hanatziv promenade, which overlooks Jerusalem's Old Walled City, as "a terrorist attack," although an investigation remains ongoing.

Security camera video shown on Israeli Channel 2 TV showed the truck barreling at a high speed off the road and into the crowd of people. The truck is seen backing up quickly, apparently trying to crush more people, before the driver is shot dead.

"There was no sense in that reverse," Leah Schreiber, a witness, told reporters. "He drove backward to crush more people. That was really clear."

MDA paramedic Chen Lendi Sharon, who was first on the scene, said: "When we arrived, there was chaos. I saw a truck that rammed youngsters getting off the bus next to the Armon Hanatziv view point. On the grass near the road, [there] lay 10 trapped individuals."

The White House National Security Council said in a statement that the United States "condemns in the strongest terms today's horrific terrorist attack in Jerusalem."

"Such cowardly acts can never be justified, and we call on all to send a clear and unequivocal message that terrorism must never be tolerated," NSC spokesman Ned Price said in the statement.

Since last year, Palestinian attackers have killed 40 Israelis and two visiting Americans in a series of mostly stabbing attacks. During that time, 229 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were attackers, while the rest died in clashes. </s> Police said on Twitter that they had taken one suspect into custody and that another passenger from the truck had died as it crashed into people gathered around wooden huts serving mulled wine and sausages at the foot of the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in the heart of former West Berlin.

The nationality of the suspected driver, who fled the crash scene and was later arrested, was unclear, police said.

German media cited local security sources as saying that there was evidence suggesting the arrested suspect was from Afghanistan or Pakistan and entered Germany in February as a refugee.

"We heard a loud bang," Emma Rushton, a tourist, told CNN. "We started to see the top of an articulated truck, a lorry ... just crashing through the stalls, through people."

Rushton said the truck seemed to be traveling at about 40 mph.

Police later said that 48 injured people were brought to Berlin hospitals.

Pictures from the scene showed Christmas decorations protruding from the smashed windscreen of the black truck. In the aftermath, it was resting lopsided on the pavement with a mangled Christmas tree beneath its wheels.

Berlin police said on Twitter they were investigating leads that the truck had been stolen from a construction site in Poland.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the circumstances of the crash were still unclear, adding: "I don't want to use the word 'attack' yet although a lot points to that."

The incident evoked memories of an attack in Nice, France in July when a Tunisian-born man drove a 19-tonne truck along the beach front, mowing down people who had gathered to watch the fireworks on Bastille Day, killing 86 people. That attack was claimed by Islamic State.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump condemned what he called an attack, linking it to "Islamist terrorists" before German police officials had said who was responsible.

The White House on Monday condemned what it called "what appears to have been a terrorist attack".

Germany has not in recent years suffered a large-scale attack from Islamist militants like those seen in neighboring Belgium and France.

But it was shaken by two smaller attacks in Bavaria over the summer, one on a train near Wuerzburg and another at a music festival in Ansbach that wounded 20 people. Both were claimed by Islamic State.

And government officials have said the country, which accepted nearly 900,000 migrants last year, many from the war-torn Middle East, lies in the "crosshairs of terrorism."

In mid-October, police arrested a Syrian refugee suspected of planning a bomb attack on an airport in Berlin. The 22-year-old man committed suicide in prison shortly after his arrest.

A government spokesman said Chancellor Angela Merkel was briefed on the situation by de Maiziere and the Berlin mayor. Police said there were no indications of further dangerous situations in the area and urged people to stay away from the scene.

"I'm deeply shaken about the horrible news of what occurred at the memorial church in Berlin," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

The truck veered into the market around 8 p.m., normally a crowded time when adults and children would be gathering in the traditional cluster of wooden huts that sell food and Christmas goods in an annual celebration replicated across Germany and much of Central Europe.

Ariel Zurawski, whose Polish freight company owns the truck, said the driver of the truck did not work for him.

"It wasn't my driver," Zurawski told Polish private broadcaster TVN 24. "I vouch for him. He's my cousin."

The incident took place near a famous Berlin landmark - the Gedaechtniskirche or memorial church built in 1891-95, which was left a ruin with a jagged tower after it was damaged in World War Two bombing raids as a monument to peace and reconciliation.

Police cars and ambulances converged quickly on the scene. </s> The driver who plowed a truck into a group of soldiers in Jerusalem, killing four people and injuring at least 10, may have been an ISIS sympathizer, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israeli police shot and killed the attack suspect, whom they identified as 28-year-old Fadi Qunbar. Police have also arrested nine other suspects, including five of Qunbar’s family members.

Speaking from the scene of the attack, on a promenade overlooking the walled Old City of Jerusalem, Netanyahu said authorities have identified the terrorist and “all signs show he is a supporter of the Islamic State.”

“We know there is a sequence of terror attacks and it’s quite possible that there is a connection between them, from France, Berlin and now Jerusalem,” Netanyahu said.

Israel will now consider using administrative detention against suspected ISIS sympathizers and supporters, according to an official familiar with the decision. Earlier, Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told CNN “there are no potential active ISIS cells here in Israel.”

Netanyahu said police had sealed off Qunbar’s predominately Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem while they investigate.

While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, Hamas, the militant fundamentalist Islamic organization, praised the attacker on Twitter.

“We bless the courageous and heroic truck operation in Jerusalem,” the group tweeted. “It comes within the context of the normal response to the crimes of the Israeli occupation.”

Hamas’ goal is the creation of an Islamic fundamentalist Palestinian state and they insist that Israel is an occupying power and must be destroyed.

Three of the four people killed were women. Israel Defense Forces said three of the slain were cadets and one was an officer. All of the slain victims were in their 20s.

“A group had gotten off the bus and were getting organized with their bags when the terrorist took the opportunity, ramming his truck into the group,” Rosenfeld said.

“Then he in fact reversed and tried to ram them again until shots were fired, and the terrorist was shot and killed at the scene.”

The four soldiers killed in the Jerusalem truck attack Sunday have been identified by Israel Defense Forces. They are:

Netanyahu posted photos of the four soldiers on Facebook with this message: “I am mourning the loss of our four soldiers who were murdered today in the terrorist attack in Jerusalem. In the name of all the people of Israel, I offer my condolences to their families.”

Several other officers and cadets were injured and evacuated to hospitals for medical treatment, IDF said.

In a statement, Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, said there was “no limit to the cruelty of the terrorists who use every means to murder Jews and damage the routine life in the capital of Israel.”

In a statement, the US State Department condemned the “glorification of terrorism now or at any time” and said “there is absolutely no justification for these brutal and senseless attacks.”

Diplomatic tensions have flared between the United States and Israel in recent weeks after the Obama administration decided not to veto a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel and its construction of new settlements in East Jerusalem. </s> Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday the crossing would reopen if the situation on the border was calm.

"Following the decision of the Minister of Defense, Mr. Avigdor Liberman, in consultation with the Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, the main cargo crossing into Gaza, the Kerem Shalom crossing, will be re-opened this morning for full activity," the IDF said on Twitter.

The IDF added that "the designated fishing zone off the Gaza Strip will be expanded to nine nautical miles," or 10.3 miles.

The current wave of tension between the Israelis and the Palestinians near the Gaza border has been mounting since late March, which marked the beginning of the Palestinian protest campaign against Israel, dubbed the Great March of Return. Over 160 Palestinians were killed in clashes since that time.

Last Wednesday, Palestinians launched about 180 rockets and mortar shells from Gaza, injuring seven Israelis, while the IDF responded with over 150 airstrikes aimed at military targets in the Gaza Strip. </s> Prosecutors filed an indictment Wednesday against Security forces arrested 10 Gazans last month on suspicion that they were planning to attack an Israel Navy vessel.

In a joint statement announcing the arrests, the General Security Service (Shin Bet) and IDF Spokesman’s Unit said the men, residents of the city of Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border, were arrested on March 12 after a coast guard patrol stopped a Gaza boat that had violated the naval blockade on the Strip by leaving the Gaza fishing zone. The navy said the fishing boat was gathering information about Israel’s marine movements.

The statement said that Shin Bet and Israel Police interrogators believe that 24-year-old Amin Sa’adi Mohammed Jama’a, a fisherman from Rafah, is a terrorist affiliated with the Islamic Jihad group and was acting on orders from the group’s leadership as part of an operation to use several boats in order to plan the attack.

Jama’a told Shin Bet interrogators that one boat was to serve as a decoy to attract the navy’s attention, while a second boat would fire a Cornet missile at the navy vessel. A third boat would then approach the damaged ship in an attempt to kidnap Israeli sailors. He is also believed to have gathered intelligence about naval movements, including troop numbers and weapons on board navy vessels.

The arrest is the latest in a string of operations by intelligence and operational security forces to thwart potential attacks, including the demolition of several tunnels under the Gaza-Israel border fence and several more land infiltrations.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman praised the intelligence service, writing on Twitter that “once against the IDF and Shin Bet have prevented a terror attack against our forces. The challenges on the Gaza border are wide-ranging and complicated. Israel has (a powerful army upon which) to rely.

“I hope that this time our friends on the left won’t demand a commission of inquiry,” Liberman said. </s> Four Israelis were killed and more than a dozen people injured Sunday when a truck slammed into a group of soldiers at a Jerusalem bus stop before the assailant was fatally shot, police said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who visited the scene, said the attacker has been identified and “according to all the signs he was a supporter of the Islamic State.”

He said there “definitely could be a connection” between Sunday's incident and recent truck attacks in France and Germany, the Associated Press reported.

Police chief Roni Alsheich described the crash as a terror attack. He said the truck driver was from an Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

"You don't need more than two to three seconds to find a terrorist target," he told the Haaretz newspaper. "The soldiers at the scene reacted immediately and killed the attacker."

The assailant speeded up and veered his truck into a group that had just exited the bus, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told TheJerusalem Post. Police heightened security throughout the capital and closed off neighborhoods near the scene, he said. Israel's security cabinet met to discuss fallout from the crash.

Paramedic Landy Sharon told reporters the truck had hit a group of young people. Military service of two years or more is mandatory for most Israelis over 18.

“About 10 people were lying on the ground near the street,” Sharno said. “Some of them were trapped under the truck.”

Leah Schreiber, told Haaretz he was an instructor who had been on the bus with the soldiers.

"A few minutes after we arrived, while I was talking about the Jerusalem landscape, I heard screaming behind me," he said. "I turned around a saw the truck getting on the sidewalk. Soldiers who were in the area started shooting at the truck. At first they couldn't kill him."

The Palestinian Hamas movement praised the attack but did not claim responsibility. Hamas spokesman Abdul-Latif Qanou called it a “heroic” act and encouraged other Palestinians to do the same.

Sunday's attack is the latest in a series of attacks by Palestinians on Israelis, mostly vehicle rammings and knife attacks. Since September 2015, Palestinian attackers have killed 40 Israelis and two visiting Americans — and 230 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis combating the attacks and other clashes, according to the AP.

Sunday’s attack marks the first Israeli deaths in three months. </s> A Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four of them in an attack that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was likely inspired by Islamic State.

It was the deadliest Palestinian attack in Jerusalem in months and targeted officer cadets as they disembarked from a bus that brought them to the Armon Hanatziv promenade, which has a panoramic view of the walled Old City.

The military said a female officer and three officer cadets were killed and that 17 others were injured. Police said three of the dead were women.

Police identified the truck driver as a Palestinian from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and said he was shot dead. His uncle, Abu Ali, named him as Fadi Ahmad Hamdan Qunbor, 28, a father of four from the Jabel Mukabar neighbourhood.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that nine Jabel Mukabar residents, including five members of the attacker’s family, were arrested on suspicion of aiding the attacker.

The Israeli military regularly takes soldiers on educational tours of Jerusalem, including the Armon Hanatziv vantage point.

Netanyahu visited the scene and convened his security Cabinet, a forum of senior ministers, to discuss Israel’s response. He said that security forces were controlling access in and out of the neighbourhood.

“We know the identity of the attacker. According to all the signs he is a supporter of Islamic State,” the prime minister said.

A government source said ministers had called for the demolition of the attacker’s home and for his body not to be returned to the family for burial. It also decided to detain without trial persons expressing sympathy for Islamic State.

The United States condemned the attack “in the strongest terms” and offered to help Israel work to determine who was behind the attack, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that also expressed condolences for the victims.

Roni Alsheich, the national police chief, told reporters he could not rule out that the driver had been motivated by a truck-ramming attack in a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people last month.

“It is difficult to get into the head of every individual to determine what prompted him, but there is no doubt that these things do have an effect,” Alsheich told reporters.

In another attack claimed by Islamic State and involving a truck driven into a crowd, nearly 90 people were killed in the French city of Nice in July.

Actions inspired by Islamic State in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have been rare and only a few dozen Arab Israelis and Palestinians are known to have declared their sympathy with the militant group.

A wave of Palestinian street attacks, including vehicle rammings, has largely slowed but not stopped completely since it began in October 2015, with 37 Israelis and two visiting Americans killed in those assaults.

At least 231 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the same period. Israel says that at least 157 of them were assailants while others died during clashes and protests, blaming the violence on incitement by the Palestinian leadership.

The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies that allegation, and says assailants have acted out of frustration over Israeli occupation of land sought by Palestinians in peace talks that have stalled since 2014.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, routinely praises those who carry out street attacks, and did so on Sunday.

“We bless this heroic operation resisting the Israeli occupation to force it to stop its crimes and violations against our people,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters.

Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, sent his condolences to the families while condemning the attack and those praising it.

“It is reprehensible that some choose to glorify such acts which undermine the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis,” Mladenov said in a statement.

Security camera footage showed the truck racing towards the soldiers and then reversing into them.

A security guard identified only as “A” told Channel 10 how he shot at the truck and its driver.

“I shot at a tyre but realised there was no point as he has many wheels, so I ran in front of the cabin and at an angle, I shot at him and emptied my magazine,” he said.

“When I finished shooting, some of the officer cadets also took aim and also started firing.”

The footage showed many of the soldiers fleeing the scene as the attack took place, their rifles slung on their shoulders.

As a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, the truck driver would carry an Israeli identity card and be able to move freely through all of the city. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its united capital, a stance not supported by the international community.

This developments comes days after the Jordanian government warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that there will be “catastrophic” consequences if he decides to move ahead with his campaign pledge to relocate the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Moving Washington’s diplomatic representation to the contested city, shared by Christians, Jews and Muslims, would mark a “red line” for Jordan, the Hashemite Kingdom’s Information Minister and government spokesman Mohammed Momani told the Associated Press Thursday.

He warned that Amman would use all of its diplomatic and political levers to prevent the move. It is the first reaction from the Jordanian government to the planned relocation.

Momani said that the decision would “inflame the Islamic and Arab streets” as it is a highly sensitive issue for Muslims in the Middle East and around the world. Moving the embassy would be a “gift to extremists,” he said, one that would “have catastrophic implications on several levels, including the regional situation.”

The move would be controversial as the U.S. would effectively recognize Jerusalem, a contested city, as Israel’s capital. The Palestinians have earmarked east Jerusalem as part of any future state, and it houses some of the most important Muslim landmarks in the world, including the Haram al-Sharif (“Noble Sanctuary” in Arabic) which is known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Israel seized control of east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and the area, as well as the West Bank, has been at the heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians ever since. Much of the international community does not recognize Israel’s capture of the territories. The Obama administration and its predecessors have maintained that the status of Jerusalem be decided through direct negotiations between both sides. </s> “For lo! That day is at hand, burning like an oven. All the arrogant and all the doers of evil shall be straw, and the day that is coming—said God of Hosts—shall burn them to ashes and leave of them neither stock nor boughs.” Malachi 3:19 (The Israel Bible™)

What should be the final protest on the border with Israel ended with 15,000 Palestinians angrily setting ablaze the crossing used to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Rioting Palestinians caused more than $9 million in damages to the infrastructure at the Kerem Shalom Crossing, the main conduit for goods to enter Gaza. This was the second week in a row the crossing was attacked by Palestinians who set fire to the border crossing on Friday night. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Kamil Abu Rokon, approved a recommendation to close the Kerem Shalom crossing until repairs are made. It will be opened for humanitarian cases which will be considered on an individual basis. The arson also targeted gas lines that provided natural gas to Gaza.

The IDF statement said, “Israel and many countries around the world work to deliver goods such as food, equipment and fuel to Gaza’s citizens, initiatives which are prevented by the Hamas terror organization’s actions.”

Two brush fires were set in Israel by incendiary kites flown from Gaza over the security fence into Israel. Walla News reported that the IDF used specialized drones to attack the kites for the first time on Friday, bringing down over 40 kites on Friday.

On Saturday night, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) destroyed a half-mile long Hamas terror tunnel that had reached to within a few meters of the border in the vicinity of Israeli settlements. This was the ninth tunnel destroyed since October.

The IDF was monitoring the tunnel for several weeks before deciding to destroy it.



The March of Return protests began on March 30 and are set to end this week when the US Embassy opens in Jerusalem on Monday. 44 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with the IDF since the riots began. The IDF released a statement that it would double the number of troops on the Gaza border in preparation for the embassy opening when more riots are expected.
As Israel marks Memorial Day followed immediately by Independence Day a truck driver is arrested at a checkpoint at the Reihan Crossing in the West Bank suspected of being on his way to launch a terror attack. The truck's contents were marked as supplies for communities on the border but were actually explosives. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman orders the checkpoint closed. Henceforth only humanitarian cases will be allowed passage at Israel's discretion.