Israeli security forces have arrested two Palestinians in the Ramallah area, including the father of a terrorist responsible for two deadly attacks against soldiers and civilians in 2018.
Border Police officers arrested them on suspicion of involvement in several terrorist incidents in recent months, the Israel Police said Tuesday.
During the operation, hundreds of local residents threw stones, firebombs, bottles of paint and other objects toward the troops, who responded with riot-dispersal measures, including tear gas and stun grenades.
Security forces raided two Ramallah-area villages and detained Omar Barghouti and his son Mohammed in Kobar and Mahmoud Murrar, a lawyer from Budrus, according to Wafa (Palestine News Agency).
Omar Barghouti is the father of Asam and Saleh Barghouti, who carried out a shooting attack at Ofra junction in December 2018 that wounded seven Israelis. A newborn child, who was delivered prematurely as a result of the attack, died three days later.
Asam Barghouti is suspected of carrying out another shooting attack days outside the Givat Assaf outpost, south of Ofra, in which two IDF soldiers, St.-Sgt.Yuval Mor Yosef and and Sgt. Yosef Cohen were killed. Two more Israelis were wounded: a female resident of Beit El and another soldier, Netanel Felber, who remains in critical condition.
Saleh was shot dead by soldiers during an arrest attempt on December 12, a day before the Givat Assaf shooting.
Omar Barghouti, a Hamas leader in the West Bank, has spent 39 years in Israeli prisons for security-related crimes. He was first arrested by the IDF in 1978 for killing an Israeli citizen. He has been repeatedly held in administrative detention for several years. He entered Israeli prison as a member of Fatah but later became a prominent leader of Hamas.
Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, took credit for the 2018 Ofra attack shortly after Saleh Barghouti was killed by IDF troops, praising it and saying that it proved that the resistance was alive in the West Bank.