A Jewish trucker ended the lives of two Palestinian Authority Arabs who attempted to kidnap him and steal his vehicle on a road in the Hevron Hills area of Judea (Yehuda) on Sunday. A third Arab who was involved in the attempted robbery and kidnapping was wounded.
The 52-year-old trucker, a resident of the coastal city of Ashkelon, was also injured in the incident.
The three Arabs hurled a blunt object at him, according to IDF Army Radio. But he shot back in self-defense, according to the report, and then drove to the nearest checkpoint to contact IDF soldiers.
A medic who treated the trucker told an interviewer on Channel 10 television news the would-be victim had sustained bruises to his back and hands, and appeared to have been struck in the chest with a blunt object.
Former Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) chief Avi Dichter, who is now a Kadima Knesset member, labeled the incident a terror attack.
“Carjacking can easily lead to kidnapping,” he told IDF Army Radio. “We must use our intelligence apparatus to identify these car thieves and bring them to justice.”
Area police seem intent upon minimizing the potential for terror in the region, however – as they have in the past.
A senior police official commented on Channel 10 news that investigators view the attempted carjacking as a criminal act carried out by Arab gangs “intent on stealing the cargo or the vehicle, or both.”
Last year police also initially misread the signals in the attack that killed Kiryat Arab resident Asher Palmer and his baby son Yonatan. The two were killed by Arab terrorists hurling rocks at his car in a drive-by attack on Highway 60.
In that investigation, police initially termed the car crash an accident — which came as the direct result of the rock hurled at Palmer’s windshield, smashing it and hitting him in the face.
Local residents on the scene immediately spotted the large rock on the front seat, missed by police, among the shards of glass from the windshield. A CT scan of Palmer’s head confirmed the findings that the crash had been no accident.
