Checkpoint Guard Shoots Axe-Swinging Terrorist
An Israeli soldier at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem shot an axe-swinging Palestinian Authority terrorist. The guard was not hurt.

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, Arutz Sheva
January 22, 2012

Arrest at Kalandia
 

An Israeli guard at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem shot an axe-swinging Palestinian Authority terrorist Sunday morning and prevented an attack. The guard and nearby soldiers were not hurt.

He shot at the terrorist, wounding him lightly in the leg, before he could hack his intended victims. The government has contracted out most of the security fence checkpoints to civilian guards, but IDF soldiers often are stationed there, also.

Similar lone terrorist attacks at checkpoints have been more frequent in the last several months since the Palestinian Authority lost its bid for unilateral recognition as a full member of the United Nations.

The Palestinian Authority has committed itself to destroying the terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, but most of its operations have been only against Hamas terrorists.

Saturday night, a near-tragedy occurred at a Jewish community south of Hevron when a soldier shot a warning shot at a suspected terrorist who turned out to be yeshiva a high school student.

Sources at the town of Susiya told us the soldier was guarding in a tower overlooking land at the Har Sinai farm, where Yair Har Sinai was murdered by Arab terrorists several years ago.

The solider saw a young man running towards the outpost and shouted at him to stop. The youth, who simply was running for exercise, did not hear the shouts and continued running until the soldier shot in the air.

The youth immediately laid on the ground and shouted he is Jewish, and the soldier realized there was no threat. The IDF is investigating the incident.

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Palestinians Attack With Rockets, Guns and Axe
Air force kills rocket squad, but shooters flee in West Bank ambush

by Sam Ser, JewishPress.com
January 22, 2012

Air force kills rocket squad, but shooters flee in West Bank ambush
 

Soldiers shot an axe-wielding Palestinian man at an army roadblock outside Kalandiya, in the West Bank, on Sunday morning. When the man pulled the weapon from his bag and started advancing toward the soldiers, they ordered him to stop and drop the axe. When he didn't, they shot him in the leg. The man was taken to hospital in Jerusalem for treatment.

A similar attack took place the night before, when a Palestinian teen stabbed a border policeman at a roadblock north of Jerusalem and ran away.

On Saturday morning, two terrorists who had launched a rocket at Israel from Rafiah, in the southern Gaza Strip, were killed seconds later when an Israeli jet fired on them. The Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility for the rocket launching squad.

It was the fourth attack from Gaza in three days – a sharp rise in violence after a three-month lull in fighting – that included more rockets and an infiltration attempt at the border with Israel.

In another attack on Saturday, in the West Bank, gunmen fired on an army convoy during a routine patrol near Ramallah. Soldiers were unharmed, but were also unable to apprehend their assailants, the IDF Spokesman’s Office said.

Inside Ramallah, earlier on Saturday, hundreds of Palestinian youths marched to protest indirect peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators that have been taking place in Jordan. The talks, held in Amman over the past three weeks, have brought little hope for a major breakthrough in the stalled negotiations between the two sides.

A day before, in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh publicly urged Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to end the talks immediately. “No Palestinian should shake the hand of his enemy or of the occupier,” Haniyeh said, protesting Israel’s arrest of PA Parliamentary Speaker Aziz Dweik and another Hamas-affiliated member of Parliament on suspicion of terrorist activity.