Police on Thursday closed a construction site in the coastal region city of Givatayim, after it was clarified that it illegally employed the Arab terrorist who stabbed and lightly wounded a 19-year-old soldier in Tel Aviv on Monday.
The terrorist, a 19-year-old Arab resident of Salfit in Samaria, stabbed the soldier repeatedly with a screwdriver before being trapped and arrested. Police found that he was working at the construction site without a work permit allowing him to be in sovereign Israel.
“As part of the ongoing struggle against the phenomenon of illegal entrants and those who instigate this phenomenon (hosts, employers and transporters) the site was closed in Givatayim for 15 days, after it employed and apparently also hosted the terrorist,” read a police statement.
The police warned that employing Arab residents of Judea and Samaria who illegally entered sovereign Israeli territory without a permit is a large danger liable to inflict a heavy toll.
In the attack on Monday, the terrorist surprised the soldier from behind as he was returning home and stabbed him in the upper body. Fortunately the cuts were not deep and the soldier was quickly released from Ichilov Hospital.
The terrorist fled to an adjacent building and tried to enter people’s apartments to attack more victims. He was arrested in the stairwell shortly afterwards and brought in for investigation.
“I saw a soldier shouting ‘terrorist, terrorist’ after the terrorist stabbed him,” recalled an eyewitness. “The terrorist was shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ (‘Allah is greater’ – ed.). I tried to block him with my bicycle, I threw it at him and chased him.”
Arab terrorists have frequently manipulated their place of employment and access to Jewish targets to launch attacks.
In a similar case early last October, an Arab laborer took advantage of his work at a Tel Aviv construction site to stab and lightly wound five victims with a screwdriver before being neutralized.
Arab construction worker terrorists were also responsible for the murder of Netanel Arami back in September 2014, when they cut his ropes as he worked on a building in Petah Tikva.
