SWC: Two Attacks in 24 Hrs; Proof Terrorism - Not Settlements - Remains Main Obstacle to Peace

February 9, 2017

In the last 24 hours Israelis were targets of two terror attacks. Six shoppers in an outdoor market in Petach Tikva (pictured) were wounded in a shooting and stabbing spree by a 19 year-old Palestinian terrorist from the West Bank.

Earlier, an affiliate of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat.

The so-called Sinai Province group, an affiliate of ISIS, said it was responsible for firing four rockets from the Egyptian-controlled Sinai Peninsula into Israel Wednesday night. Three of the rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, and the fourth landed in open water.

“A military squad fired a number of Grad rockets at communities of Jewish usurpers in the town of Eilat,” the group said in a statement posted online, JTA reported. The rockets were fired, “in order to teach the Jews and the crusaders a proxy war will not avail them of anything.”

“The future will be more calamitous with Allah’s permission,” the terrorists threatened.

“In a 24-hour period, peaceful Israeli communities were once again targets of Palestinian and international terrorism. It is important to note that the targets were civilians living in cities located inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders,” noted Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Dean and Founder and Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO.

“On the eve of the first meeting between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, these attacks are proof that terrorism and hate, not ‘settlements’ constitutes the main obstacle to Israel-Palestinian peace.”

“Israel will continue to do what any country would do to protect its citizens from terrorism. The rocket attacks are a stark reminder why no Israeli leader, left, right, or center, would ever agree to return to the pre-1967 boundaries that would leave Israel’s heartland only nine miles wide,” Rabbis Hier and Cooper concluded.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).