Israeli soldier stabbed at bus stop in Tel Aviv

A 20-year-old Israeli man was stabbed Monday at a bus stop in what police are calling a terrorist attack.

The victim of the “targeted” attack in Tel Aviv, a member of the Israel Defense Forces, was taken to a hospital in serious condition, police said.

The Palestinian suspect was arrested “with the help of eyewitnesses while he was hiding in an apartment building in the fourth floor nearby the central bus station,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

The suspect is from Nablus in the West Bank, she added.

The incident came amid a new round of infighting between Palestinian factions.

The political party Fatah said Sunday it will scrap a series of events to commemorate the death 10 years ago of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The group blamed rival faction Hamas, saying it is behind a series of bombings at the homes of Fatah leaders.

Hamas denounced the attacks, according to the Facebook page of spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Fatah controls the West Bank, and Hamas controls Gaza. While the parties have fought violent battles in the past, they’ve made repeated announcements of plans to form a unity government as well.

On Saturday, Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian man who attacked police officers with a knife in a village in northern Israel, police said. There were conflicting accounts of exactly what happened.

Israel has been facing what some call an “auto intifada” — a spate of attacks on Jewish civilians in Jerusalem by Palestinians driving vehicles.

Hamas said it “blesses the action. What is happening in Jerusalem is pushing us to prepare for war.”

Violence has recently involved the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and one of the three holiest sites in Islam. It’s known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, and Jews are allowed to visit the site but not to pray there.

A Palestinian recently shot and critically wounded a rabbi, Yehuda Glick, who campaigns for the right of Jews to pray at the site. After an Israeli counterterrorism unit shot and killed the assailant hours later, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — part of Fatah in the West Bank — wrote to the assailant’s family saying he would “go to heaven as a martyr defending the rights of our people and its holy places.”

CNN