Hamas claimed responsibility Thursday for two stabbing attacks in the West Bank that wounded two Israelis, the Palestinian Quds News Network reported.
In a statement, Hamas leader Abdul Rahman Shadid said the “stabbing operations in the West Bank represent the optimal response to the incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque and the plans to Judaize it.”
Shadid was referencing the more than 1,000 Jewish worshippers, including far-right Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Temple Mount compound earlier Thursday for Tisha B’Av, the Jewish day commemorating the destruction of the ancient Jewish temples.
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Ben-Gvir at the Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount compound, Thursday. Credit: Har Habait Organization
Ben-Gvir at the Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount compound, Thursday. Credit: Har Habait Organization
According to Quds, Shadid urged Palestinian youth to continue resisting “the crimes of the occupation and the settlers” and said Hamas salutes the attackers and “all the resistors in the West Bank.”
Earlier Thursday, a 51-year-old Israeli man was seriously wounded in a stabbing at the Derech Avraham farm outpost near the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh, according to medics and the Israeli military.
Later Thursday, the IDF said another Israeli was moderately wounded in a stabbing attack near the settlement of Ganim, near Jenin. The attacker was killed, the military said.
Ganim is one of several Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank that were designated by the government for resettlement in January after they were evacuated during the 2005 disengagement plan.