US calls both shooting of Israeli patrolman and young Palestinian ‘terror attacks’

The Biden administration branded two weekend shootings that took the lives of a Palestinian and an Israeli as “terror attacks” in a pair of condemnations that indicated Washington’s holding of the attacks on equal footing.

The State Department issued two tweets within a minute of each other on Saturday evening with both using very similar language.

“We strongly condemn today’s terrorist attack in Tel Aviv that killed one and wounded two others as well as other recent terrorist attacks against Israelis. We express our deepest condolences to the victims’ families and call for an end to these acts of violence and incitement to violence,” read the first tweet.

“We strongly condemn yesterday’s terror attack by Israeli extremist settlers that killed a 19-year-old Palestinian. The US extends our deepest sympathies to his family and loved ones. We note Israeli officials have made several arrests and we urge full accountability and justice,” read the second tweet.

Lawyers for two settlers suspected in the Friday night killing of Palestinian Qusai Jamal Matan during a West Bank clash asserted Saturday that they had acted in self-defense after a mob attacked them and other Israelis.

But the State Department’s decision to insist on calling it a terror attack indicated that it did not accept the suspects’ narrative.

The tweet also came amid growing frustration from the Biden administration over Israel’s failure to crack down on rampant settler violence, which has gone largely unchecked. Matan was the third Palestinian killed in a settler assault this year. Hundreds of Israelis participated in the attacks, but only several have been arrested and none have so far been charged.

There has been a rise in settler violence in recent months, with the UN on Friday reporting there have been nearly 600 attacks on Palestinians and their property over the past six months.

One of the Israelis arrested after the Friday shooting, Elisha Yered, is the former spokesman for the far-right Otzma Yehudit party’s MK Limor Son Har-Melech. Yered is suspected of interfering with the investigation, while the other detainee, Yehiel Indore, is believed to have shot Matan.

Indore and Yered had been among a group of settlers who illegally encroached onto private Palestinian land belonging to the residents of Burqa in order to graze their animals. Matan was shot after a clash broke out, which each side accused the other of instigating.

The settlers were from Oz Zion, a flashpoint illegal outpost nearby whose ultra-nationalist residents have been involved in a number of attacks against Palestinians.

In the Saturday incident, two municipal security officers approached a suspect they saw behaving suspiciously on a bustling street corner in Tel Aviv.

The suspect initially refused to answer their calls, and as the pair got off their motorcycles, the Palestinian man pulled out a handgun and opened fire, hitting one of the patrolmen.

Chen Amir, 42, was critically hurt after being shot in the head. He was taken to the nearby Ichilov Hospital where doctors declared his death.

The second officer returned fire and struck the gunman, who was also taken to Ichilov before succumbing to his wounds.

The Palestinian gunman was identified by the Shin Bet security agency as 22-year-old Kamel Abu Bakr, a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group from Rummanah near Jenin. He had been hiding in the Jenin refugee camp for the past six months and was wanted by Israeli security forces for opening fire at IDF troops in the West Bank, according to the Shin Bet.

Abu Bakr did not have an entry permit to Israel due to his affiliation with Islamic Jihad and his suspected involvement in the previous shooting attack. The Shin Bet was investigating how he entered Israel.

The shooting came as tensions have remained high across the region, amid a string of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank which have left 26 people dead and several others seriously wounded since the beginning of the year, including Saturday’s shooting.

According to a tally by The Times of Israel, 164 West Bank Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the year — most of them during clashes with security forces or while carrying out attacks, but some were uninvolved civilians and others were killed under unclear circumstances, including in cases by Israeli settlers.

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.