Jerusalem – Netanyahu Blames Abbas Incitement For Jerusalem Terror Attack

Jerusalem – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas encouraged violence against Jews in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following the vehicular terror attack in Jerusalem Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamist Hamas movement, with whom he has forged a unity government deal, for the attack. He also ordered police to heighten their presence in Jerusalem.

“Terrorist attacks like today’s in Jerusalem are typical of Hamas, President (Mahmoud) Abbas’ partner in the Palestinian government,” Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said.

“This is the way in which Abu Mazen’s (Abbas’s) partners in government operate, the same Abu Mazen who just days ago incited to harm Jews in Jerusalem,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office added.

Repeated damage caused by Palestinians to the Jerusalem light railway, which links Arab and Jewish neighborhoods and was once hailed by Israeli authorities as a symbol of coexistence, has put a third of its carriages out of commission.

The tensions have underscored deepening divisions in the Israeli-occupied part of the city that Israel claims as its “indivisible capital”.

Tensions have been high in Jerusalem since events leading up to a 50-day Gaza war that ended in August and the killing of a Palestinian teen in the city.

Three Israelis have been charged in the killing case on suspicion they had sought to avenge the June slayings of three abducted Israeli youths in the occupied West Bank.

The last deadly incidents in Jerusalem took place in August when a Palestinian killed an Israeli and overturned a bus with a construction vehicle and a gunman wounded a soldier in attacks that appeared to be a backlash against the Gaza war.