Second IDF Soldier Murdered In Three Days After Hebron Shooting

September 23, 2013

3 min read

IDF

And when Saul’s son heard that Abner was dead in Hebron, his hands became feeble, and all the Israelites were affrighted. (2 Samuel 4:1)

IDF
Israeli soldiers stand near a shooting scene in the city of Hebron on September 22, 2013, An Israeli soldier was shot dead on Sunday during Sukot in the holy city of Hebron. He was the second Israeli serviceman killed since Friday by Palestinian gunmen. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israeli security officials worked through the night Monday, combing Hebron for an Palestinian sniper who shot and killed an IDF soldier, The Times of Israel reported. The shooting was the second murder of an Israeli soldier at the hands of a Palestinian terrorist in three days. Sgt. Tomer Hazan, 20, was murdered on Friday after being lured to a village near Qalqilya in the West Bank by a co-worker.

According to The Times of Israel, thousands attended Hazan’s funeral at the military cemetery in Holon, near his hometown of Bat Yam.

The soldier killed in Hebron was Sgt. Gal Gabriel Kobi, 20, from Tirat HaCarmel. He was shot in the neck at an IDF checkpoint near Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs on Sunday night and succumbed to his wounds in Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, the IDF reported.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon expressed his condolences to the family of Sgt. Kobi and vowed to apprehend the perpetrators of the shooting.“The IDF and the security services will lay their hands on the terrorist and those who sent him and they will pay the price,” Ya’alon said on Monday morning. “The State of Israel will not tolerate attempts by terror organizations or individual terrorists to attack its citizens or soldiers and disrupt routine life, and will act firmly and strongly against such attempts.”

These attacks have come while the Israelis and Palestinian Authority continue their re-started peace negotiations at the behest of the United States.

The IDF has said it does not believe the incidents show a change in the generally peaceful situation in the West Bank, which has been marked by security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in recent years.

“Our assessment remains: these are pinpoint events. We don’t see a change in direction, but we will remain at a high alert and won’t relax our efforts to protect the Israeli people,” IDF Spokesman Brigadier General Yoav “Poli” Mordechai told Army Radio Monday morning.

In the wake of the killing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the immediate resettlement of Beit Hamachpela, a building near the Tomb of the Patriarchs which was previously sealed by order of the Defense Ministry.

“Those who try to uproot us from Hebron, the city of our forefathers, will only achieve the opposite,” said Netanyahu in a statement. “We will continue to fight terrorism with one hand, and strengthen settlements with the other.”

An Israeli source in Hebron had said earlier in the evening that the city’s Jewish community was pressuring politicians to approve the resettlement of Beit Hamachpela. The building hit the headlines in late March 2012 after settlers made a clandestine move into the building.

Hazan was drawn to an Arab village by 42-year-old Nidal Amar, who kidnapped and killed him, in the hope of trading the corpse for his brother’s release from Israeli prison.

Washington condemned the killing of the soldiers and called on all parties to denounce the slayings.

“Such violence and terror are unacceptable, and undermine efforts to establish the positive atmosphere the parties need to progress in peace negotiations,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an emailed statement.

The West Bank settlers’ Yesha Council called on the government to cease talks with the Palestinian Authority immediately, and stop releasing Palestinian terrorists.

According to The Times of Israel, Israeli Knesset Member and Bayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home) Chairman Naftali Bennett, who heads the right-wing Jewish Home coalition party, sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that he reconsider the policy of releasing terrorists as part of a peace package.

“While the release of terrorists was a precondition for negotiations, unfortunately there is no doubt that developments since the beginning of the talks demand that the government rethink its position,” Bennett wrote.

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