A terrorist infiltration alert was activated in the Samaria village of Kiryat Netafim on Wednesday after a Palestinian individual jumped the security fence surrounding a building project, according to local authorities.
Residents were warned to remain in their homes “until further notice,” and Kiryat Netafim’s kitat konenut (rapid response team) was activated and conducted searches for the suspect, who according to local media was apprehended.
Approximately an hour after the alert was issued, the Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command gave the all clear.
It was not immediately clear whether the infiltrator was a construction worker. Some media reports identified the suspect as a car thief who had jumped the fence to escape the police.
While the military banned Palestinians from working in Jewish towns throughout Judea and Samaria in the initial months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the then head of IDF Central Command, in late 2023 lifted most of the access restrictions.
Before the war, some 200,000 Palestinian workers were employed throughout the Jewish state, including 30,000 in Judea and Samaria.
Proposals to readmit P.A. workers to Jewish communities were met with dismay by many. A survey taken last year in Eli, a town of some 4,500 inhabitants in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, showed that 82% of residents were opposed, regardless of added security measures.
However, Israeli courts confirmed in a series of cases that elected local officials do not have the legal right to block Palestinian laborers from entering their communities if the military allows their employment.
Two polls last year found that some two-thirds of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria support the Oct. 7 attacks, in which around 6,000 Hamas-led terrorists broke through the Gaza border, murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and took more than 250 captive.