The Jerusalem intifada aimed at the capital city’s Light Rail on Saturday night with five separate attacks as the train passed through the Arab Shuafat neighborhood.
Arab attackers hurled rocks at the passenger cars in a blatant attempt to wreck the commuter line, with the light rail repeatedly coming under a hail of stones while making its way through northern Jerusalem.
Each attack began as the train passed through Shuafat; the same Arab neighborhood where three of the light rail’s stops were utterly demolished, right down to the infrastructure, at the start of Operation Protective Edge in early July.
In four out of five of the attacks, passenger cars sustained thousands of shekels’ worth of damage, with windows smashed each time.
None of the passengers were physically injured, although some were traumatized.
In four attacks no arrests were made, but in one case security forces on the train managed to arrest some of those who were throwing the rocks.
More than 100 attacks on the train have been reported since three Israeli teens were abducted and murdered in Gush Etzion by Hamas terrorists in June. An Arab teen from Shuafat was likewise kidnapped and murdered in what appeared to be a revenge killing by Jewish extremists the day after the bodies of the Jewish teenage victims were found.
In the past two months Arab attackers have caused approximately half a million shekels’ damage to the Jerusalem Light Rail as it passes through Shuafat and nearby Beit Hanina, according to the CityPass company that owns the rail line.