site of Armon Hanatziv stabbing attack
site of Armon Hanatziv stabbing attackHezki Baruch

The Jerusalem Juvenile Court on Monday sentenced two of the three terrorists who carried out a stabbing attack on the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood in Jerusalem in May, 2016.

Two elderly women were wounded in the terrorist attack.

The terrorists were also sentenced to pay NIS 200,000 ($57,000) in compensation to the victims of the attack.

The third terrorist who participated in the attack will receive 25 months in prison.

The three terrorists, all residents of Jabel Mukaber, were convicted of stabbing, assisting the enemy during wartime, attempted murder, and carrying a knife.

The indictment revealed that the three had planned to carry out a terrorist stabbing attack for months prior to the attack, using Facebook to plan their attack. Even after the attack the three Arab minors planned to conduct another stabbing attack, although police got to them first.

During the month of February 2016, two of the terrorists reached the decision to launch a stabbing attack against Jewish civilians or security forces, with a goal of murdering them and becoming "martyrs."

The three terrorists wrote back and forth in private messages on Facebook, and agreed on launching a suicidal knife attack with a goal of murdering Jews and dying "a martyr's death," which the Palestinian Authority (PA) regularly lauds as the highest honor in Islam.

They agreed on a date and location for a meeting between them before launching the attack, and they determined they would arm themselves with a knife and ax.

On the morning of the attack, one of the terrorists met his cousin as he walked to the meeting point and told him he was on his way to conduct a terror attack. He gave the cousin his cell phone and asked him to give the phone to his family if he died.

One of the terrorists brought a knife and ax, and the three decided that only two of them would take part in the attack while the third minor would launch a lethal stabbing attack on a bus with a goal of murdering a Jew, after the other two had already died in their attack.

Just around 8 a.m. on the morning the attack, the terrorists spotted a group of visibly Jewish elderly women walking on the Haas Promenade, with two of them walking in front, two others walking a short distance behind them, and an additional elderly women walking in the back.

The terrorists decided to attack the elderly women one after the other. They took out the knife and ax they had hidden in their bags and quickly approached from behind the 84-year-old woman who was walking after her friends.

The two terrorists caught her by surprise and attacked her with the knife and ax with the intention of murdering her, and inflicted several stab wounds to her upper body and leg.

Afterwards they ran at the 86-year-old woman who was next in line and attacked her with the weapons as well.

Upon hearing the shouts of their friends telling them to run the other elderly women fled for their lives, and the two terrorists gave up on pursuit and abandoned the site.

After the attack the third terrorist contacted the two on Facebook and asked to plan another stabbing with the goal of murdering a Jew. The two terrorists agreed to meet and talk about the plan in the coming days.

Afterwards the terrorists erased their Facebook accounts and all of their correspondence on the matter, in a failed attempt to disrupt the police investigation that eventually found them.