
In a conversation with Israel National News, Ayelet Pomerantz, a resident of the Samaria town of Shavei Shomron, tells about the ordeal she went through with her husband, Avi, and her two small children when a cinder block was thrown from point blank range into their car late in the evening.
The window above a two-year-old girl was shattered.
The family was on their way back from a holiday celebration in Homesh at approximately nine in the evening, and passed through the Palestinian Authority village of Burka. "Between Homesh and Shavei Shomron we saw a burning tire on the road. We slowed down the car, and when we slowed down we heard a loud boom that shook the car. We didn't know if it was rocks, shots, or fireworks."
Avi and Ayelet installed rock-resistant windows in their car from stones about a month ago, yet the cinder block thrown from point blank range smashed the right window, the one under which the two-year-old girl was sitting. The shrapnel penetrated inside and fell on the girl, but due to the special windows the incident ended only with scratches from the shrapnel that penetrated the vehicle and fell on the girl.
"We felt paralyzing fear," Ayelet recalls. "This is a road that we pass through a lot, and many vehicles passed there yesterday as well. That's why it was surprising." In those seconds after the impact, Ayelet adds, the realization that they are within point-blank range of the terrorists seeped in and a moment after the car slows down to a stop, they realize that they have to press the gas pedal and flee the scene. In the process, "trying to calm yourself down, to calm down the children, who repeatedly asked what happened under pressure and, thank God, without crying."
"My husband came to his senses quickly and handled the event perfectly, but in the first moment it was paralyzing. We stop the car and immediately continue because there is no reason to stop," she says. At the first opportunity, they stopped to make sure the children were breathing. "When the girl started crying after a panic, they realized that something was bothering her" and then they discovered the shrapnel that penetrated the toddler's clothes and scratched her.
Further down the road "We saw a military jeep. We stopped and reported that we had been attached with a cinder block. Our intention was to get to the house to check what was happening with the children." Ayelet adds: "If we hadn't upgraded a month ago, we would be in a completely different place." She also states that three hours earlier, another family was hit by stones nearby, and also in that incident, a baby girl was slightly injured. Their event, she points out, is by no means an isolated case. Many other cases of burning tires, stones and even a bomb that was set off are part of the threat that accompanies the traffic on the routes of the area, yet Ayelet emphasizes the importance of continuing to travel on the roads in Judea and Samaria.