By R. Blum
The Israeli wounded in a rock-throwing and stabbing attack in Gush Etzion on Sunday morning recounted his ordeal to reporters from his Yerushalayim hospital bed several hours later.
Yisrael Ben-Aharon, 58, was brought to the Hadassah Medical Center/Ein Karem in moderate condition, after being treated on the scene by Magen David Adom paramedics for stab wounds to his upper body and blows to his head and face.
Shedding light on partially mistaken details reported earlier in the day by the Hebrew press, Ben-Aharon gave a literal and figurative blow-by-blow of the two-pronged attack, which took place in Gush Etzion, near the settlement of Metzad. Just before 10 a.m., Ben-Aharon was driving towards Metzad, when a tow-truck purposely blocked his way. “Suddenly I saw this terrorist running towards me,” he said, describing the event as best as he could under the circumstances.
And then he threw a rock on my front windshield. So I drove in reverse, but then he came up on my left side and threw a rock right in my face. He then tried to come up to me on the right, so I tried to escape, but I had difficulty doing so. And then he came up and started to stab me. I managed to keep the knife at bay for a moment to try and lift myself up from my seat to reach my gun, and [that’s when] he stabbed me in the chest. I hit him hard on the arm… while cocking [my gun]. I managed to hurt him, and he lay on the ground. I was in shock. My stomach hurt. I didn’t realize he had managed to stab me, but I didn’t want to lose consciousness. Then I saw him lying on the floor, and I shot him twice in the legs so he wouldn’t move.
The attack in question is still being investigated by security services. Two terrorists were purportedly involved, and both fled in the direction of the nearby Arab village of Si’ir. The IDF was looking into whether a Palestinian who was admitted to a Hebron hospital shortly after the attack is the one shot by Ben-Aharon.
Ben-Aharon’s encounter – part of a surge in Palestinian violence over the past several weeks – was followed a few hours later by an incident in which a female terrorist tried to stab a policeman at the Tzalbanit checkpoint in Hebron, near the Cave of the Patriachs. She was shot — and seriously wounded – by troops at the checkpoint, before managing to stab any of them.
Around the same time on Sunday afternoon, a man boarded a bus near Kibbutz Gesher in northern Israel, shouting that he wanted to become a “shahid” (martyr). Alerted to the incident, Tiberias police officers intercepted the bus and arrested the man, who had a knife, a kippah and an Israeli ID card in his possession. An investigation is under way to determine if the card belongs to him or was stolen.
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{Matzav.com Israel}
