Description

Photo:
Israel Police stop and search cars outside of Rahat after Israeli woman stabbed in Bedouin town. February 6, 2016. Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz

FILE PHOTO (Haaretz): Bedouin town of Rahat's marketIlan Assayag

____________

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- An Israeli woman was injured in a stabbing attack in a predominantly Bedouin city in the Negev region on Saturday, Israeli police said.

Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri told Ma’an that a Jewish Israeli woman in her sixties was stabbed at a market in the town of Rahat in central Israel.

The suspected attacker -- believed to be a woman -- fled the scene, she added, saying that Israeli forces were searching the area and still investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Al-Samri said Israeli security forces were investigating the attack as being "apparently nationalistically motivated."

She added that the Israeli woman was taken to a hospital in Beersheba, and that she was in moderate to serious condition.
Rahat is the largest Bedouin settlement in Israel and occupied Palestinian territories, and the only one to be recognized as a city by Israeli authorities.

Bedouins in Israel live mainly in 45 unrecognized villages scattered primarily in the region between Beersheba and Arad. They are the remnants of the Bedouin population that lived across the Negev desert until 1948, when 90 percent were expelled by Israel and the remainder confined to a closed reservation.

The majority of Bedouins in Israel and the West Bank live a relatively settled but still semi-nomadic lifestyle, residing in permanent villages but pasturing livestock in adjacent areas.

Israeli restrictions on movement and demolition policies have severely impacted Bedouins' traditional lifestyle and quality of life.
_____

65-year-old from local kibbutz suffers moderate wounds after being stabbed in the neck in southern Israel; manhunt underway for suspected assailant.

by Almog Ben Zikri for Haaretz

An Israeli woman was moderately wounded after being stabbed in the neck Saturday afternoon in Rahat, a Bedouin town in southern Israel, in what the police say is a suspected terror attack.

The police said the suspected assailant fled the scene and a manhunt was currently underway, with heavy police presence in the area.

The woman, 65, was evacuated in moderate condition to the Soroka Medical Center, Be’er Sheva, with wounds to her neck. Paramedics identified the woman as Jewish, but it was initially unclear if the attack was politically motivated, though police later said they were investigating the attack as such.

Her daughter told Haaretz that while the entire family had entered a shop in the market, her mom remained outside. She said they had only come to Rahat for a few minutes. The family was from a local kibbutz.

According to MDA paramedics, the incident occurred in the town's market and when they arrived at the scene the woman was fully conscious and receiving first aid from her family members. "She said she was shopping with her family in the market," Gil Askvich, a paramedic, said.

Local council head Sigal Moran said that she trusts authorities to find and try the assailant, but added that "no terrorist – despicable as he might be – will manage to harm the neighborly ties we share with Rahat and its residents, who are no doubt as angry and sad with the incident as I am."