Protest outside Karnei Shomron
Protest outside Karnei ShomronUriyah

Dozens of residents of the Shomron (Samaria) community of Karnei Shomron protested at the entrance to their community on Saturday night.

The residents were demonstrating against the ongoing rock-throwing and firebomb attacks on nearby Highway 55.

The latest attack occurred on Friday, when a woman in the seventh month of her pregnancy was lightly wounded when a rock hit the windshield of her car as she drove on the highway.

During the protest on Saturday night, the residents of Karnei Shomron said the army has not been doing enough to protect them from the ongoing Arab attacks.

"We fix the windshields and continue to drive but this situation cannot go on!” said Shira Jehassi, a resident of the community whose daughter-in-law was wounded on Friday.

“We are simply powerless, this is life-threatening and we want the army to wake up and act in a more assertive way,” she told Arutz Sheva. “One schoolgirl told me that she was afraid to go on the road, a friend of mine is scared to join me on a car trip out of town, this disrupts our lives. It’s impossible to ignore!”

Herzl Ben-Ari, the head of the Karnei Shomron Local Council, said during Saturday night’s rally, "We want our residents to leave their homes safely and return safely, so I am once again calling on the defense establishment to eradicate the rock-throwing coming from Azzun, to eradicate this phenomenon.”

He added, "We came out to protest against the ongoing situation of the rock-throwing attacks which have been occurring not for the last week or months, but for years without a break. A rock can kill! Today we stand here quietly, on the side of the road, but if this phenomenon continues we’ll have to take further action and I hope we don’t get to that point.”

Firebomb attacks have come to be the most common form of terrorism in Judea and Samaria in recent months, according to statistics recently published by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet).

While the Shin Bet recently said that the number of terror attacks against Israeli citizens has gone down, security forces have apprehended several terror gangs in recent weeks.

Last week it was revealed that the Shin Bet and the IDF have arrested members of a terror gang who were involved in a shooting attack near Neve Tzuf in December 2012.

The incident occurred in mid-December. Terrorists fired about 30 shots at a vehicle driving next to the town. Nearly caught up in the crossfire was a resident of the town who was waiting for a ride on the main road. Miraculously he was uninjured.

A week earlier the Shin Bet said it had uncovered and apprehended a Hamas terror squad in Hevron, arresting some 20 members of the terror group’s armed wing.

The Shin Bet and army arrested "approximately 20 terrorists affiliated with Hamas who were planning a kidnapping attack in order to bargain for the release of prisoners," said a Shin Bet statement.