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December 18, 2005
Father of five killed in Hebron Hills ambush
By ERIK SCHECHTER
The army stepped up security measures in the Hebron area over the weekend following a Palestinian attack on a carload of West Bank settlers early Friday afternoon in which Yossi Shok, 33, of Beit Hagai was killed.
Right before the ambush the army had removed a local checkpoint, but following the shooting, some roads were closed to Palestinian traffic, the IDF Spokesman said.
Shok’s funeral procession from Beit Hagai, set for 11 a.m. Sunday, will pass the site of his murder and will end with his burial in Hebron’s Jewish cemetery.
Shok, a father of five, including an infant daughter, was shot in the head when Palestinians overtook and opened fire on his car in the southern Hebron Hills. The terrorists then escaped to the Fawwar refugee camp. Shok was listed in critical condition and died shortly after being rushed to Jerusalem’s Hadassah-University Hospital at Ein Kerem.
Two sisters who were passengers in the vehicle were lightly wounded and medics treated them at the scene of the attack. One of the girls told Channel 1 that at first she thought Palestinians were pelting their car with stones, "but then I realized that it wasn’t, because there was a lot of blood." At that point, the two sisters took cover by lying on the seats.
Shok was a member of Beit Hagai’s secretariat and leader of his settlement’s emergency readiness team. "He was the best there was,‘ said Shok’s friend and Beit Hagai spokesman Yair Lior. ’He was a loving husband and father. He was deeply pained from the government’s betrayal of the homeland by uprooting Gush Katif."
Lior was critical of what he said was too liberal an attitude by the Sharon government towards the Palestinians. "We pray that we will be delivered from this government that does not care about the spilled blood of Jews," he said.
The Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-affiliated Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the murder. However, Judea and Samaria Division Commander Yair Golan said that the specific attackers were part of the same terrorist cell responsible for the deaths of five Israelis in the area.
Some four months ago, two Israeli teenagers, Avihai Levy and Aviad Mansour, were killed in a drive-by shooting at the hitchhiking post near Beit Hagai.
Clashes continued elsewhere in the territories over the weekend.
On Friday evening, an IDF post south of Nablus, near the village of Mizra A-Nabuni, and a car near Kalkilya came under fire, but no casualties were reported.
A Border Police jeep was damaged Saturday night when fired on by Palestinians near Kfar Salem.
Soldiers arrested nine Hamas members in the West Bank and on Saturday afternoon, a unit from the Nachshon Battalion wounded and apprehended a fleeing Islamic Jihad terrorist.
Later in the evening near Kfar Kafin, troops from the Duchifat Battalion arrested two teens who admitted to previously putting a booby-trapped tire near the security fence last week. It blew up before a patrol arrived at the scene.
An explosion in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday killed a terrorist and wounded three other people as he was returning from firing rockets at Israel, Palestinian officials said.
Palestinian security officials said the explosion was the result of an Israeli air strike. The IDF said it was not involved in the attack.
Palestinian officials identified the man killed in the attack as Khaled Abu Seta, 24, from the Abu Rish Brigades, a small group tied to Fatah.
Elsewhere n Gaza, the IDF exchanged artillery fire with Palestinians with no reported injuries.
In Memoriam
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