Hamas is attempting to launch major terror attacks against Israel, including suicide bombings, from the West Bank, a senior Palestinian Authority source told The Times of Israel.

Information gleaned from interrogations of Hamas operatives arrested recently by PA security services shows that the terror group’s leaders in Gaza and abroad have sent orders to local commanders to escalate their activities — from encouraging protests and stabbing attacks to more dramatic and deadly assaults on Israeli civilians, the source said.

Some two dozen Israelis and others have been killed in a wave of Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and shootings since the start of October. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed, a majority of them attackers who died during their terrorist attacks.

Over 1,000 Israelis were killed in terror attacks, including dozens of suicide bomb attacks, during the Second Intifada, from 2000 until roughly 2004, many of them carried out by Hamas operatives.

The PA sources said Hamas’s new efforts to escalate the violence would further raise tensions, as Israel would be expected to counter the increased violence with further clampdowns on Palestinian areas in the West Bank, in turn leading to a weakening of the Palestinian Authority – a key interest of Hamas. (Read more from “Hamas Seeking to Orchestrate Suicide Bombings in Israel” HERE)

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Ezra Schwartz, an American yeshiva student who was killed Thursday in a West Bank terror attack, had been volunteering delivering food parcels to Israeli soldiers in the area when he was shot by a Palestinian terrorist.

Schwartz, 18, of Sharon, Massachusetts, was remembered as “a fun person to hang out with, very charismatic.”

He was one of three people killed in a terror attack near the settlement of Alon Shvut. He was studying for a year at Yeshivat Ashreinu in Beit Shemesh . . .

Schwartz was killed when an assailant opened fire from inside his car at vehicles near the Etzion Bloc junction. Police named 51-year-old Ya’akov Don of nearby Alon Svhut and 24-year-old Palestinian Shadi Arfah of Hebron as the other victims of the shooting . . .

The United Synagogue Youth program which Ezra joined in 2013 released a statement saying he “is remembered as being a warm and funny member of the…community. Staff on his trip recalled today that he used his deep experience in Judaism to teach other teens how to participate in Jewish ritual.” (Read more from “US Youth Slain by Terrorists Was Bringing Food to Soldiers in West Bank” HERE)

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If there was any doubt about President Obama and the Obama administration’s animosity toward the Jewish State of Israel, it was erased during the month of October.

Obama has taken a Palestinian incited wave of terrorism and found different ways to blame it on the Jewish State, justifying the Palestinian actions and encouraging them to incite and carry out more terrorism.

An Israeli named Nehemia Gershuni-Aylho has been keeping a running list of each and every attack in Israel since the first of the year. His list is published on the Internet and includes what happened (knife attack, stone throwing, rocket, etc.), what town/city it happened, how many people were hurt/killed, who attacked (Israeli Arab, or Jew) the target, and of course the source of their information.

According to Gershuni-Aylho’s list through Sunday October 18 there have been 1,414 Israeli Arab or Palestinian attacks on Jews since the first of the year, 1,028 during the first 18 days of October. Sadly there were also 18 attacks by Jews against Arabs since the first of the year, 13 occurred during the first part of October.

How did this latest wave of terrorism begin? Much of it began with incitement from Ramallah where Palestinian Chairman Abbas has been claiming that the Israeli Jews plan to change the status quo on the Temple Mount. (Read more from “Obama Continues to ‘Blame the Victims’ as Terrorists Pummel Israel” HERE)

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By Judah Ari Gross and Raoul Wootliff. Six companies of Israeli soldiers were mobilized in Jerusalem Wednesday, as the IDF joined efforts to secure the city following an escalation in the violence there. The move is part of a slew of measures passed by the security cabinet overnight Tuesday aiming to prevent further terror attacks after the deadliest day so far in the current wave of unrest.

Tuesday saw four terror attacks, two of which, in Jerusalem, left three Israelis dead. All told, over 30 were injured.

“In accordance with the cabinet’s decision last night, as of this morning 300 IDF soldiers have already begun spreading out to provide additional security under police command,” an Israel Police spokesman said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Police also began setting up checkpoints at “the exits of Palestinian villages and neighborhoods in east Jerusalem,” where most of the recent attackers have come from, a police spokeswoman said. Those police actions are intended to return security and order to all the country’s residents, the police said.

The security cabinet also voted to ramp up security arrangements on Jerusalem’s public transport, where the IDF will bolster security until the Transportation Ministry enlists additional guards. Soldiers will be stationed at bus and light rail stops, as well as on buses and trains across the city. (Read more from “Israel Deploys Hundreds of Soldiers in Jerusalem” HERE)

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Kerry Links ‘Increase in Violence’ to Israel’s Settlement Activity

By Rebecca Shimoni Stoil and AP. Expansion of building in settlements has increased Palestinian frustration, leading to the current upswing in violence, Secretary of State John Kerry told an audience at Harvard University Tuesday evening. Speaking about America’s ability to impact outcomes throughout the world, Kerry warned that “unless we get going, the two-state solution will be conceivably stolen from everybody.”

“There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years,” Kerry said during a question-and-answer session, “and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.” Kerry noted that there was also “a frustration among Israelis who don’t see any end.”

“I look at that and I say if that did explode — and I pray and hope it won’t — and I think there’re options to prevent that, then we would inevitably be at some point engaged in working though those kinds of difficulties,” Kerry continued. “So better to find the ways to deal with it before that happens than later and I think what always perplexes me – we’ve been through Oslo, Wye Plantation, Madrid, countless negotiations. Most people I talk to have a pretty damn good sense of what has to be done.”

“It’s a question of making the judgments and having the courage to go there,” Kerry insisted, adding that “we have 16 months left in this administration and we’re going to stay engaged and try to work through these issues because there are options and there is a better other side to the current conflict we’re witnessing.”

The top US diplomat stressed that the Obama administration would keep pushing for an agreement in its remaining 16 months in office. US-backed talks collapsed spectacularly in April 2014 after a nine-month effort and negotiations have been in a deep freeze ever since. (Read more from this story HERE)

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