A new anti-terror security barrier was built Wednesday to protect residents living and traveling in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Armon Hanatziv from the hostility of Arab residents in Jabel Mukabar.
The high barrier was built between Rehov Meir, the main street in Armon Hanatziv, and the hostile next-door Arab neighborhood in an attempt to prevent firebombing and stone-throwing attacks by Arab terrorists.
More than a few are residents of Jabel Mukabar, including the three who perpetrated two lethal attacks on Tuesday, the deadliest so far this year.
If the experiment proves successful, similar barriers will be built in other areas around the capital as well, according to the Hebrew-language 0404 website.
Israeli police began temporarily sealing the neighborhoods that have become incubators for terror within hours after receiving authorization from the Security Cabinet.
The first to be cut off was Jabel Mukabar, home to Ala Abu Jamal, 33, a Bezeq technician and one of Tuesday’s jihadists.
Until that morning, Jamal was simply known as the cousin of the Har Nof terrorists and an employee at an Israeli utility company. His relatives had shot and stabbed Jewish worshipers with axes, knives and a gun as they prayed in Kehillat Bnei Torah, a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem. The dead included four anglo immigrant rabbis and a Druze Israeli police officer who responded to their desperate call for help. Seven others were badly wounded. It was to Jamal that the television cameras turned during the mourning period at the family home in Jabel Mukabar; he became a media star. Then everything quieted down.
On Tuesday, the Bezeq technician decided to join his cousins on the martyrs’ roll. Jamal rammed his Bezeq car into a crowd of people, many of them elderly, waiting at a bus stop on Malchei Yisrael Street in central Jerusalem. He then leaped out of the car and stabbed those who were still standing, butchering a 60-year-old rabbi in the process. At the end he was shot and killed.
A number of other terrorists have hailed from the same neighborhood. Now all the entrances to Jabel Mukabar have been blocked with concrete barriers.
By 11 pm Wednesday, Israeli security forces had also set up temporary road blocks at the entrances to the neighborhoods of Ras el Amud, and Sur Baher.
More than 4,500 police officers are currently patrolling Jerusalem, supplemented by nearly a thousand additional Border Guard Police officers and 300 IDF combat soldiers.
Security personnel and government leaders will reconvene to assess the situation as needed, officials said.