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'Terrorist was a Palestinian officer'
Soldier sitting in jeep stabbed, crashes vehicle as he tries to escape.

A Palestinian Authority police officer stabbed and killed an IDF non-commissioned officer on Wednesday who was sitting in a military jeep in a traffic jam near the Tapuah junction in Samaria. The soldier, St.-Sgt. Maj. Ihab Khatib, 26, from the mostly Druse village of Maghar in the Galilee and a member of the Kfir Brigade, was on his way from Jenin to a military outpost near the junction, located on Road 60, the main north-south highway in the West Bank.

Khatib was sitting in his Sufa jeep with the window open when the PA police officer, who was wearing civilian clothes and was later identified as Muhammad Hatib, approached, pulled out a knife and thrust it into Khatib's chest. Khatib tried to escape by pressing down on the gas pedal, eventually flipping over in his jeep on the side of the road. Yossi Margalit, a security officer for the Rehalim settlement who was nearby, rammed his car into the terrorist, lightly wounding him. He was apprehended by soldiers and handed over to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) for questioning.

IDF sources said it appeared Hatib had acted alone and had lain in wait for a military target, since he had waited on the side of the road when he could have attacked Israelis at a nearby hitchhiking post.

Khatib is survived by parents and five siblings. Several years ago, his uncle was killed in action while serving in the army and during the Second Lebanon War, his aunt was killed when a Katyusha rocket fired by Hizbullah hit her house.

IDF sources said the attacker was the head of bureau for the PA's Ramallah police chief. IDF sources said that the PA police were trained by a European Union organization, based in Ramallah, called the EUPOL COPPS (the EU Police Co-ordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support).

Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, head of the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria, spoke with senior PA officials and updated them on the attack. The Palestinians told Mordechai that they planned to conduct their own independent investigation into the incident. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad denounced the attack and said it "conflicts with our national interests." He pledged to take steps to prevent such incidents in the future, while endorsing "peaceful resistance" against settlements and the security barrier.

Reacting to the stabbing, one government source said on Wednesday night that while the PA had made marked improvements in its security apparatus, as Israel has repeatedly said in public, "they still have serious challenges, one of them being the ability to deal with their own Fatah people."
Posted by: ryuge 2010-02-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=290200