Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised on Thursday to bolster the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria in the wake of fatal stabbing of an Israeli soldier earlier in the day.
Visiting the site of the murder, Netanyahu said: "They [the terrorists] destroy, but we build; this is our response." Netanyahu further said he had "no doubt" that the killer would be found and that Israel would "settle the score."
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The 19-year-old yeshiva student and IDF inductee Dvir Sorek was found outside Kibbutz Migdal Oz in Gush Etzion southwest of Jerusalem bearing major stab wounds. A massive manhunt was launched after the perpetrator.
Earlier in the day Netanyahu took part in a cornerstone-laying ceremony for 650 new homes in the Samaria city of Beit El, not far from Sorek's hometown of Ofra. Speaking just hours after the incident, Netanyahu vowed to "secure our sovereignty over our historic homeland."
Netanyahu said that "we promised to build hundreds of housing units – today we are doing it, both because we promised and because our mission is to establish the nation of Israel in our country, to secure our sovereignty over our historic homeland."
"We know that the Land of Israel is built through suffering," he added. "[Dvir] was from a family that has already made a heavy sacrifice for the Land of Israel."
In 2000, around the time Dvir was born, his mother, Rachel Sorek, lost her father, Rabbi Binyamin Herling, when Palestinian Authority security force members opened fire on a group of Israeli hikers on Mount Ebal above Shechem/Nablus.
"These vicious terrorists, they come to uproot – we come to plant. They come to destroy – we come to build," said Netanyahu. "Our hands will reach out and we will deepen our roots in our homeland, in all parts of it."
The Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organizations have heaped praise on the killing of Sorek, partly due to his designation as an Israeli soldier.
While technically an inductee into the IDF, Sorek was in a hesder yeshiva program which pairs years of Torah study with years of military service, and had not yet begun the military portion of his program or undergone any military training.
"We salute our people's heroic fighters who carried out the heroic operation that killed a soldier in the occupation's army, who was studying at a military college known for graduating extremists who hold Talmud- and Torah-based beliefs that support killing our people and seizing its lands," Hamas said in a statement.
Earlier, PIJ also celebrated the murder, saying "The heroic operation is a natural response to the occupation's terrorism and crimes at the expense of our people, land and holy sites. It is the right of our people to push back against the destruction and demolition of citizens' homes in Wadi Hummus, a crime that requires a painful and deterring response."
Sorek's father, scholar and journalist Yoav Sorek, spoke tearfully to reporters in Ofra.
"Our Dvir was sweet," he said. "Two months ago he had a karate exam and he didn't get a high mark because his teacher said he performs the movements well, but lacks 'murder' in his eyes. Now someone with murder in his eyes has taken him. We will carry the pain."
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
