(February 14, 2023 / JNS) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Jerusalem municipal officials have agreed on a series of measures to increase security in the capital following a wave of terrorist attacks.
The plan includes reinforcing security and police units, concentrating intelligence and operational efforts and improving civilian protection in the city, particularly at bus stops.
Some 300 bus stops defined as high-priority and currently unprotected will be reinforced immediately, with the Prime Minister’s Office allocating a designated budget. The Jerusalem municipality will in the next phase of the project reinforce the remaining approximately 700 bus stops within its jurisdiction using a future funding allocation by the PMO.
“In light of the recent spate of difficult incidents throughout the country in general and in the capital in particular, my government has been working day and night in order to restore the sense of security to the citizens of the State of Israel,” said Netanyahu in a statement.
Added Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion: “I thank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the entire PMO team for the rapid response and finding an immediate solution for the personal security of the residents of Jerusalem.”
Israel’s Security Cabinet on Sunday approved a series of counter-terrorism measures including reinforcing Israel Police and Border Police units in Jerusalem and expanding operations against inciters and supporters of terrorism.
Netanyahu emphasized that security forces would take focused action against terrorists and that there would be no collective punishment.
The prime minister said earlier Sunday that Israel’s governing coalition would this week pass legislation to strip the citizenship of terrorists and expel them from the country. The declaration came after a terrorist attack in Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood that claimed the lives of Yaakov Israel Paley, 6, his brother, Asher Menachem Paley, 8, and 20-year-old Alter Shlomo Lederman.
On Monday, Israeli soldier St.-Sgt. Asil Sawaed, 22, died from wounds sustained earlier in the day in a terrorist attack at a checkpoint to Shuafat in eastern Jerusalem. It came just hours after a teenager was stabbed and lightly to moderately injured in a terrorist attack in the Old City of Jerusalem.
In late January, seven people were killed and several others were wounded in a terrorist shooting attack at a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Neve Ya’akov neighborhood.
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