Terrorists in Samaria open fire on kibbutz

Palestinian terrorists in northern Samaria opened fire on Tuesday on the northern community of Kibbutz Meirav, located inside pre-1967 Israel.

There were no injuries in the attack, but one home was damaged when a bullet penetrated a window.

Israeli forces in the area returned fire, and troops launched a manhunt for the terrorists.

“They fired a burst. One bullet hit our house,” kibbutz resident Oren Henig told JNS.

Henig, who is director of the Liba Center, a group seeking to strengthen the Jewish identity of the state, has been serving for nearly three months as a major in the IDF reserves. He is stationed in the “Gaza Envelope,” the area just outside the Gaza Strip.

He learned of the incident on his way back to his post after a couple of days of R&R at home.

His wife and one of his daughters, age 8, were in the house at the time of the shooting.  

“My wife heard the burst of gunfire. My daughter, who’s in third grade, was sitting in the living room. Sadly, we’re used to it because this isn’t the first time they’ve fired on the kibbutz. But this time there was a shattering of glass. And then they discovered the hole in the window. The bullet really entered the house,” Henig said.

“My wife told me go ahead and continue to the army. ‘Right, now I’m strong,’ she said.”

Henig underscored that Meirav is located on the slopes of Mount Gilboa and not in Judea and Samaria or some other area that people normally consider dangerous.

“This is considered a pastoral and quiet place. People don’t come here [for ideological reasons] to settle the land. They work in agriculture, in high-tech. It’s supposed to be a totally normal place,” he said.

The shooting came from the Palestinian Arab village of Jalbun, about 200 to 300 meters from the kibbutz. “Sometimes it’s people from the village. Sometimes it’s people who come from Jenin,” Henig said.

Shootings were commonplace in the months before Oct. 7, he added. There were a couple of shootings after the Hamas attack on Israel’s south, but then the army entered the area in “a more aggressive, intensive” way. A few months of calm followed.

“It became quiet, so we relaxed. Sadly, we [in Israel] choose quiet over security,” Henig told JNS. “We need to demand security. To demand that there won’t be people with weapons around the corner who want to kill us, to murder us. As long as they have weapons, our lives are in danger.”

Henig hopes Israel’s leaders will do what is needed to remove all threats so that the country’s residents won’t be in danger. He doesn’t expect the change to happen right away.

“It’ll take time. They need to switch the diskette,” he said, using a popular Israeli expression meaning to stop operating under old assumptions and adopt a new way of thinking in line with reality.

In a separate incident in Samaria on Tuesday, a Palestinian terrorist was killed after he opened fire at an IDF post near Beit Furik, located on the road between the Jewish communities of Itamar and Elon Moreh.

There were no casualties among IDF personnel, the military said. The terrorist’s handgun as well as a knife found on his body were confiscated and will be examined by Israel’s security forces.

Also on Tuesday, Palestinian terrorists threw rocks at the car of Rachel Yaniv, the sister of Hallel and Yagel, who were murdered while driving near Huwara in Samaria one year ago this month.

The rock-throwing attack took place on a road near Ariel, some 6 miles southwest of Huwara. Yaniv’s rear windshield was shattered in the incident.

“We could easily be mourning another child,” the Yaniv family noted in a statement. “We expect the government and military to protect all residents of Judea and Samaria and to wake up quickly before it’s too late.”