As the Israel Defense Forces battles Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the country’s Judea, Samaria and Jordan Valley regions are experiencing a parallel rise in terror incidents, according to data published by Rescuers Without Borders (Hatzalah Judea and Samaria) on Tuesday.
Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 15, Rescuers Without Borders first responders recorded more than 2,600 attacks targeting Israeli civilians and soldiers, including 760 cases of rock-throwing, 551 fire bombings, 12 attempted or successful stabbings and nine vehicular assaults.
Among the report’s findings was a sharp increase in the number of shootings, with 127 instances of gunfire reported over the past three months. By comparison, in all of 2022, Hatzalah recorded just under 100 shooting attacks.
The organization’s figures do not include the hundreds of violent attacks on security personnel occurring during counterterrorism operations in villages under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria have killed five Israelis and wounded many others since Oct. 7, according to Hatzalah.
On Monday, an Israeli woman in her 70s was killed and at least 17 other people were wounded in a combined car-ramming and stabbing attack in the central city of Ra’anana.
Israeli forces arrested two suspects following a manhunt. Police said the terrorists were residents of Bani Naim near Hebron in Judea.
Relatives Mahmoud Zaidat, 44, and Ahmad Zaidat, 24, were employed at a car wash in Ra’anana’s industrial area without valid work permits, Ynet reported. Both suspects were known to Israeli security forces.
Rescuers Without Borders was founded in 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada, with the goal of establishing a civilian emergency response infrastructure in remote parts of Judea and Samaria.
Last month, the IDF carried out a drill simulating an Oct. 7-style attack on Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, according to Hebrew reports.
The exercise was one of various scenarios the military is preparing for in Judea and Samaria following the invasion of southern Israel by Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip, in which 1,200 people were murdered, thousands more wounded and 240 kidnapped.
Meanwhile, in recent weeks, the IDF has been investigating possible infiltration tunnels Israeli forces discovered near Jewish communities in the Hebron Hills in Judea and Shiloh in Samaria’s Binyamin region.
Since Hamas launched its war against Israel, residents of the Binyamin region have reported an accumulation of artificial hills between Shiloh and Ofra, in a possible sign of heavy digging by Palestinians in the area.
The IDF has also been looking into complaints by residents of Bat Hefer, a village east of Netanya, of tunneling sounds coming from the direction of P.A.-controlled areas. Residents have reported heard tunneling originating from Shuweika, a satellite village of Tulkarm.
