Islam Yousef Abu Hamid, the man suspected of killing 20-year-old Israeli soldier Ronen Lubarsky when he dropped a stone on his head during a counter-terror operation near Ramallah, was arrested last week by the Israel Defense Forces.
Troops took Hamid into custody on June 6. Lubarsky was killed when Hamid dropped a large stone slab on his head from the third floor of a building as his unit conducted terror-related arrests in the al-Ama’ari camp on May 24.
The arrest is not Hamid’s first. He was imprisoned in Israel from 2004 to 2009 for terror activities conducted in coordination with Hamas. His brothers engaged in a terror attack that killed Shin Bet agent Noam Cohen, who was murdered in 1994 when Hamas terrorists opened fire on his car near Hebron while he was driving with a Hamas informant.
Lubarsky, a member of the elite Duvdevan unit, was evacuated to a Jerusalem hospital in critical condition, but died of his wounds a few hours later. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of staff sergeant and buried at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl military cemetery.
“Since this difficult event, we have operated in coordination with the Shin Bet and other forces in the refugee camp,” said the deputy commander of Duvdevan in a Hebrew video statement. “Additionally, we have continued to operate non-stop in Judea and Samaria, at all hours of the day, in order to stop and prevent terror attacks that would harm the citizens of the State of Israel.”
