Israel’s Arab MPs warned of expulsion

PM Benjamin ­Netanyahu has warned that some Arab members of Israel’s parliament could be drummed out of the Knesset.

Prime Minister Benjamin ­Netanyahu has warned that Arab members of Israel’s parliament should be drummed out of the Knesset for offering comfort to the families of Palestinian gunmen ­involved in terrorist attacks.

His comments have been ­supported by other hardliners in the right-leaning government, ramping up tensions as the ­nation comes to grips with a foiled mass-casualty terror attack in Jerusalem’s Old City and heavy jail sentences for Jewish youths who killed a Palestinian boy in a hate-crime ahead of the 2014 Gaza war.

A court in Jerusalem on Thursday sentenced two of the three youths who kidnapped, ­tortured and burnt to death Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir to unusually lengthy terms: life imprisonment for the older of the attackers, 17, and 21 years’ jail for a second youth, 16. The ringleader, Yosef Ben David, 31, has claimed insanity and is yet to be sentenced.

Khdeir was abducted outside a mosque in East Jerusalem, beaten and set alight in a forest outside the city. The post-mortem examination showed the 16-year-old was still breathing when the flames consumed his body.

The murderers admitted the attack was in revenge for the deaths of three Jewish teenagers who had been kidnapped and killed while hitchhiking in the ­occupied territories, setting in train tit-tor-tat missile exchanges and artillery battles between ­Israel and Gaza that led to the war of 2014 and the deaths of an estimated 2139 Palestinians and 71 ­Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The latest wave of violence was sparked last October by ­unsubstantiated rumours that ­Israel intended to extend control over the Noble Sanctuary precinct of the Old City, revered by ­Muslims. Containing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosquem, it tops what is known to Jews and Christians as Temple Mount, and is holy to them, too.

The uprising began with random knife attacks on or car ramming of Israeli Jews, but there was no indication the campaign was being orchestrated. After a lull, a number of attacks this year have sounded alarm bells with the authorities. On January 1, a gunman named Nashat Milhem opened fire on a packed Tel Aviv pub, killing two and wounding seven; he was latter tracked down and shot dead by security forces.

Last week, a Palestinian youth accidentally blew himself up while approaching Israeli troops outside of annexed East Jerusalem with a homemade pipe bomb.

And on Wednesday, 19-year-old border policeman Hadar Cohen was fatally wounded by gunshots and her female partner critically stabbed after they confronted the three Palestinian ­attackers outside the Damascus Gate of the Old City. The men were carrying automatic weapons, knifes and at least one pipebomb. All three were killed.

At the same time, Hamas was forced to own up to at least three tunnel collapses, some involving the death of diggers, reinforcing Israeli claims that Islamist group was using international reconstruction funds to re-establish underground lines used for smuggling to Egypt and for attacking Israel. Much of the network was destroyed in the 2014 war.

Shalomi Eldar, a columnist for online newsletter Al-Monitor, says a vicious cycle is in swing, bloodier which each evolution. “One worrying development is already clear: a transition from stabbing attacks by frustrated youths to the use of firearms by those wishing to take revenge for their deaths,” he says.

“Such shooting attacks threaten to change the nature of the ­uprising and force Israel to modify its response.”

Declaring that Wednesday’s violence outside the Old City “represents an escalation”, ­Jerusalem deputy mayor Dov Kalonivich has asked that the army put more troops on to the streets.

Hamas taunted the attackers had seemed to have no difficulty penetrating Israeli security to travel from Jenin, on the West Bank, to the gates of the Old City, Israel’s biggest tourist attraction and home to a thriving community of nearly 40,000 people.

Mr Kalonivich wants the ­security forces to be more proactive: read more stop and searches by the Israeli Police and Israel Defence Forces; checkpoints on access points to Arab-dominated East Jerusalem; more lockdowns in the West Bank territories.

Mr Netanyahu, having visiting the surviving policewoman from Wednesday’s attack, took aim at Arab Knesset members who had paid their respects to the loved ones of the Palestinians killed on Wednesday.

“Members of the Knesset who go to comfort families of terrorists who murdered Israelis do not ­deserve to be in the Israeli Knesset. I have asked the Speaker of the Knesset what steps can be taken against them,” he said.