Arab Is Stabbed to Death in East Jerusalem Attack

An Arab man was stabbed to death in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem early today, the first fatal incident in a series of similar attacks against Arabs, police said.

A Jerusalem police spokesman said the attack in the religious Jewish neighborhood of Beit Yisrael may have been carried out by the same person who has stabbed five other Arabs in the nearby Mea Shearim neighborhood in recent months.

“The motive appears to be nationalistic,” said Shmulik Ben-Ruby, a police spokesman who was on the scene early today.

Ben-Ruby said police believe the same person may also have been responsible for setting off an explosive device recently outside the apartment of three young Arab Israeli women who live on the edge of Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem. No one was injured in the fire-bombing.

The latest victim, a man in his mid- to late 40s, has not been identified.

Police have said they are investigating whether the rising incidence of political violence against Arabs in Jerusalem may be attempts to avenge similar attacks against Jews, which have also been on the rise.

Last week, a Jewish seminary student was stabbed to death on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem’s Old City as he walked to morning prayers at the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism.

Israel regards all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector, which was captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, as its eternal capital, never to be redivided. Palestinians view the eastern, traditionally Arab side of the city as the capital of the independent state they hope to establish.