Israeli security forces arrest 21 Palestinians amid ongoing wave of violence

Israeli security forces arrested 21 Palestinians overnight and early Wednesday as a wave of ongoing violence, which started in October, continues, Israeli police and military said.

Overnight, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers along with members of the paramilitary border police unit arrested 18 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to a statement by the IDF spokesperson.

Out of those arrested, eight are suspected of affiliation with the Hamas Islamist group, deemed a terrorist group by Israel and the United States, and three others were brought in for activities of "popular terrorism," meaning protesting and rock throwing at Israeli security forces, according to the Israeli army.

The IDF did not provide the reasons behind the arrest of seven other suspects. The previous night, the IDf arrested 19 people in the West Bank.

The Israeli police arrested on early Wednesday two Arab Israeli vendors, Palestinians living in east Jerusalem, after finding pipe bombs and ammunition in their stand at the Old City of Jerusalem, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

A police sapper neutralized the explosives and the suspects were detained for questioning, Samri said.

Israel occupied east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. There are 300,000 Palestinians living in east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1981, who carry Israeli ID cards.

Also on Wednesday, the Israeli police announced it had arrested a suspect in a stabbing attack that took place in southern Israel three weeks ago.

A 17.5 year-old Palestinian from the village of Yatta, near Hebron in the West Bank, was arrested two weeks ago after an investigation led by the Israeli police and the Shin Bet Security Agency.

The suspect allegedly stabbed an Israeli woman and wounding her moderately in Rahat, a village of Bedouin Arabs in the Negev Desert, on Saturday February 6 and fled. After an investigation he was arrested at his home in Yatta four days later. The suspect had worked for a family in southern Israel.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the suspect tied himself to the events and led the investigators to the knife which he used to carry the attack.

Twenty seven Israelis and more than 170 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing wave of violence which started in October.

Israeli leaders charge the Palestinian Authority incites to violence, whereas Palestinians leaders charge it is the result of the 49-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip, where they wish to establish a Palestinian state, in accordance with the two state solution. Endit