A Palestinian Authority customs policeman, armed with an automatic weapon and wearing a bulletproof vest on Sunday night tried to enter the settlement of Vered Jericho in the Jordan Valley, intending to carry out a mass shooting attack, Kan 11 News reported Monday night.
The policeman arrived at the settlement, which is located near the PA city of Jericho, in a PA police patrol car he had stolen. The guard at the gate confronted him and won’t let him enter, at which point the policeman walked away and fired an entire cartridge into the air. He then fired two more bursts into the air.
The gate and the security fence are located about half a mile from the settlement.
The policeman was arrested by the PA security forces and confessed to planning to carry out an attack on the residents of Vered Jericho. PA security is now investigating the man’s ties to the Islamic Jihad.
פרסום ראשון | שוטר פלסטיני הודה כי תכנן לבצע אתמול פיגוע ירי בתוך היישוב ורד יריחו. אחרי שהשומר מנע ממנו להיכנס, הוא ירה לאוויר מחסנית שלמה. גורם ביטחוני פלסטיני לכאן חדשות: “מתנערים מהמעשה החמור, הוא לא מייצג את מנגנוני הביטחון”@carmeldangor @galberger pic.twitter.com/A4n0iG44rE
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) April 11, 2022
A PA Security official told Kan 11 News that the PA “understands the seriousness of the act and rejects it since it does not represent the PA’s intentions.” However, it should be noted that, since 2010, PA Security personnel have carried out six terrorist attacks, five of them involving shooting, most recently about two years ago. There were also earlier incidents in which PA police officers used their weapons against Israelis illegally, one of the most famous of which was the lynching in Ramallah carried out on two Israeli soldiers at a PA police station. Two policemen were also involved in the shooting attack in Hadera.
The father of the terrorist from Dizengoff who was allowed to praise his son’s despicable murdering of civilians is a former officer with the rank of colonel in the PA National Security apparatus and served as brigadier general in charge of the PA’s Shechem brigade. He was visited by Akram Rajoub, the governor of Shechem who hugged him and praised his son the martyr. Mind you, said governor was a personal appointment of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the one who condemned the Dizengoff massacre.
The father of the jihadist who was killed on Saturday in an exchange of gunfire with the IDF in Jenin was an officer in the Palestinian Authority’s military-intelligence apparatus. And a senior Fatah leader, Jibril Rajoub, send him a signed letter of condolences.
Munir al-Jarub, one of the chief Fatah instigators, posted on Twitter a picture of the father of the terrorist from Dizengoff embracing the father of the Islamic Jihad terrorist who was killed on Saturday in the exchange of fire in Jenin, and wrote: “Here are two officers in the security apparatus. This is the school from whose officers’ homes emerge the men of the struggle.”
Fatah and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah’s military wing) claimed responsibility for the terrorists from Dizengoff and Bnei Brak. Yellow Fatah flags and signs bearing the name of Fatah and al-Aqsa Brigades adorn the courtyard of the terrorist’s house where the mourning tent was erected.
Fatah’s chairman is Mahmoud Abbas, also the chairman of the Palestinian Authority since the 2005 elections.
In Judea and Samaria, there is ongoing and continuous security coordination between the Israeli security forces and the PA security forces. This coordination is presented as a mutual interest, essential to maintaining security in the Judea and Samaria area. The two forces hold joint meetings, even joint seminars.
Between January and October 2009, the PA police handed over to the IDF, the Israel Police, and the Civil Administration some 232 Israeli citizens who entered the PA in violation of the law. But there were several cases where this security coordination was hampered. In September 2000, a Border Police officer was murdered by a PA policeman during a joint patrol, following which the joint patrols were stopped.
