A three-year-old girl was stabbed early Monday morning in the Sur Baher neighborhood in east Jerusalem. Her father, a man in his 30s, was arrested on suspicion of her murder after his brother called the police.
The report to police came in at around 4 a.m. of a girl hurt in an “instance of violence.” Israel Police and Border Police officers arrived at the scene, sealed it, and eventually apprehended the father, who had tried to run.
The father has a psychiatric record; police said there was no record of violence pertaining to him. An investigation has been opened by the authorities. His arrest was extended until Monday.
The parents are divorced, and the girl was spending the night at her father's, per custody agreements. At some point in the night, he attacked her with a knife, per initial police estimates.
When the other family members in the home realized what had happened, the father then tried to attack his brother, stabbing him in the stomach. His mother, who tried to intervene as well, was also injured, said police.
Suspect transferred to police custody for further investigation, likely criminal in nature
The girl’s uncle, Ziyad, told KAN Reshet Bet said he got a message from the girl’s grandfather - the mother’s father - that she was killed “without any mercy, without any morals” to a girl with her whole life ahead of her.
He said that, like many couples, this one got divorced after just a few years of marriage.
He denied any psychiatric history with the father. “He was educated, he went to university… He is in control of his faculties. He simply committed a heinous act.”
Per the Abraham Initiatives, a peace-building NGO that tracks crime rates in the Arab sector, the girl, along with the fatal shooting in Tira of Muhammad Hajaj, 33, brings the sector’s crime death rate up to 112 since the start of the calendar year.
The number of crime-related murders in the Arab sector has been on a steady rise since 2022.