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Netanyahu: ‘All options open’ in responding to deadly West Bank shooting attack
Ben Gvir and others in coalition clamor for wide military operation after Eli terror: ‘Time has come to return to targeted assassinations from the air, to bring down buildings’
In the wake of a deadly terror shooting Tuesday in the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that “all options are open” to respond to the attack, as many members of his coalition clamored for a widespread military operation.
“We have already proven in the past few months that we will settle the score with all the murderers, with no exceptions,” Netanyahu said in a video statement hours after the shooting, in which four Israelis were killed and several others wounded.
“Anyone who harms us, is either in prison or in a grave. This will also be the case here.”
Netanyahu issued a warning to “all those who come after us — all the options are open. We will continue to fight terror at full power and we will defeat it.”
The two shooters said to have carried out the shooting at a gas station near the West Bank settlement of Eli were both shot dead — one at the site of the attack and the other hours later near the Palestinian town of Tubas.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, at the scene of the attack Tuesday evening, said he was calling on Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to launch an operation in the West Bank.
“The time has come to launch a military operation in Judea and Samaria,” he told reporters at the site, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
“To return to targeted assassinations from the air, to bring down buildings, to erect roadblocks, to expel terrorists, and to finish passing the death penalty for terrorists law.”
Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, the chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that “Judea and Samaria are not a no-man’s land and we have already proven that the Israeli outlook has shifted from containment to a sharp and clear attack on the nests of terror.”
Energy Minister Yisrael Katz tweeted that the “vile terrorists, their dispatchers and supporters, will meet our iron fist. It is our responsibility as members of the government to exterminate terrorism and build the country, and we shall do it.”
Shas MK Moshe Abutbul tweeted that “we must strike hard, with an iron fist, on the terror strongholds” in the northern West Bank “that have again raised their heads.”
Far-right Otzma Yehudi MK Limor Son Har-Melech said in remarks to the Knesset plenum Tuesday that the shooting in Eli was proof of the need for a large military operation.
“We are demanding a military operation, if someone has yet to understand why the reality requires it, they received an answer today,” she said, while visibly emotional.
Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot, who also visited the scene of the attack, released a video of himself making comments next to the gas station.
“A horrendous incident, once again on our watch,” he said. “We are shouting from every stage: We need to gather their weapons, we need a wide-scale operation in northern Samaria.”
Some members of the opposition also made similar calls.
Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman said “the time has come for the government of Israel to wake up and to launch a wide military operation in Judea and Samaria, and not just against bottom feeders and junior field operatives, but against the perpetrators of the terrorist wave who sit in Gaza and enjoy the immunity that Netanyahu granted them.”
Liberman declared that it is “time to restore sovereignty and security to citizens — the residents of Judea and Samaria cannot feel like sitting ducks.”
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz, a former defense minister, said the opposition will support a responsible response to the attack.
“At this time, determined and responsible actions are required, led by the security forces. We will back up every correct decision of the government in the face of murderous terrorism,” said Gantz, who is also a former IDF chief of staff.
According to the army’s initial investigation of the attack, the gunmen arrived at the gas station by car and first opened fire with assault rifles at diners in the adjacent Hummus Eliyahu restaurant, after which the terrorists targeted motorists at the gas station itself. At one point, an armed civilian shot dead one of the terrorists, while a second terrorist apparently stole a running vehicle from one of the victims and fled the area.
Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have been elevated for the past year, with the military carrying out near-nightly raids in the West Bank, amid a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.
On Monday, six Palestinians were killed and nearly 100 were wounded in gun battles in Jenin. Eight IDF soldiers sustained light-to-moderate injuries in the clashes and as a result of a massive roadside bomb that was detonated next to an army vehicle.
Since the beginning of the year, Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank have killed 24 people and left several more seriously hurt, including Tuesday’s attack.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
