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The site of the attack at Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Street, April 23, 2017. Credit: Magen David Adom. Published by Haaretz and Maan News
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BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) --
4/23/2017. 3:25 pm

A Palestinian youth stabbed and wounded at least four people in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Sunday afternoon, Israeli police reported.

Israeli police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri said in a statement that an assailant stabbed and lightly injured three Israelis in their fifties, two men and a woman, in the area of Yarkon Park near the coast in Tel Aviv.

Al-Samri said that a fourth Israeli in their 70s was also attacked, falling on the ground without being stabbed, and was being treated for minor injuries.

Footage shared by Israeli media showed that the attack occurred in the lobby of a hotel, before the assailant was presumably stopped outside.
She identified the attacker as an 18-year-old Palestinian from the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld meanwhile said that an investigation was under way, and that police had determined that the motives behind the stabbing were "terror related."

Ichilov Medical Center spokesman Avi Shushan told Ma'an that all four patients were "very lightly" wounded, and were expected to be released from the hospital later Sunday.

Israeli news outlet Arutz Sheva reported on later on Sunday that the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli agency responsible for implementing Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territory, had ordered a freeze in permits given to pro-Palestinian organizations to travel to Israel pending the end of the investigation, following reports that the young Palestinian had been given a one-day permit at the request of one such organization.

The frequency of alleged and actual small-scale stabbing attacks by Palestinians peaked during a wave of violence in the fall of 2015. While Israeli officials have routinely claimed that Palestinian attacks are part of a international rise in Islamist extremism, many Palestinians have instead pointed chiefly to the frustration and despair brought on by Israel's decades-long military occupation of the Palestinian territory and the absence of a political horizon.
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Four Wounded as Palestinian Man Attacks Passersby on Tel Aviv Waterfront

Police say incident is terror attack, assailant detained and handed over to Shin Bet for questioning ■ perpetrator had received entry permit from travel organization

Yaniv Kubovich and Gili Cohen for Haaretz
Apr 23, 2017 3:05 PM

Four people were lightly wounded when a Palestinian man attacked them in Tel Aviv on Sunday, in what police say was a terror attack.

The assailant, who has been detained, was identified as an 18-year-old resident of Nablus in the West Bank, and carried out the attack using work tools at his disposal.

He first reached the Herods Hotel on Tel Aviv's waterfront promenade on Sunday around lunchtime and began attacking passersby at the scene. A 70-year-old man was lightly wounded.

The assailant then fled the scene in the direction of the nearby Leonardo Hotel, where he wounded another three people. They suffered light wounds in the form of stabs and cuts.

A man at the scene apprehended the assailant, who was then detained by nearby police forces. During his interrogation, the assailant said that he works in Israel and decided to carry out an attack against Jews. He has since been taken for questioning by the Shin Bet security service.

The perpetrator had an entry permit for a visit to Israel, which was issued Sunday at the request of Natural Peace Tours, a Tel Aviv-Jaffa based travel and tourism service for Palestinians.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, instructed that permits for visits to Israel be suspended for all institutions and organizations until an investigation is completed and lessons learned.

Following the incident, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said that "this is again a painful reminder of the difficult reality, especially on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day."