Terrorist Who Showed Bloodstained Hands During 2000 Ramallah Lynch Eliminated

 Twenty-four years after Abed al-Aziz Salha waved his bloody hands triumphantly following a brutal lynch on two IDF soldiers in Ramallah, the IDF eliminated him in Gaza.

In one of the most iconic pictures of the second intifiada, Salha was photographed in October 2000- at the beginning of the outbreak of violence following the failed talks between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat. Salha, together with numerous other terrorists, lynched Vadim Nurzhitz (37) and Yossi Avrahami, two reservists who had mistakenly entered Ramallah, in the El-Bireh police station, and he then appeared in the window of the police station and displayed his hands to the crowd.

Salha was later arrested, but he was freed as part of the 2011 “Shalit deal,” along with 1,027 other convicted terrorists, among them Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. This week, 24 years after the bloody murder, Salha was eliminated during an IDF operation in Gaza.

According to a joint IDF and Shin Bet statement, Salha was eliminated in an air strike in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

“Salha participated in the brutal lynch in Ramallah in the year 2000, in which reserve soldiers Sergeant First Class (res.) Yosef (Yossi) Avrahami, of blessed memory, and Corporal (res.) Vadim Nurzhitz, of blessed memory, were murdered. He is known from the picture in which he was photographed waving his blood-covered hands from the window after the lynch,” the statement read.

“In recent years, Salha was involved in directing terror activities in Judea and Samaria, and continued to occupy himself with terror activities reccently as well. The terrorist, age 43 from Deir Jarir in Binyamin, was banished to the Gaza Strip during the Shalit deal, after he was arrested in 2001 following the lynch. The IDF and Shin Bet will continue eliminating and pursuing past and present Hamas terrorists and anyone who threatens the citizens of the State of Israel.”

On October 12, 2000, Nurzhitz and Avrahami entered Ramallah by mistake on their way to their base in the Binyamin Region, instead of avoiding the city through the Hizma checkpoint. Upon their entry into Ramallah, a mass of Palestinian Authority Arabs began hurling rocks at their vehicle and attacking it. Palestinian Authority police officers took them to a local police station, where they were violently murdered. Their bodies were later hurled out of the police station’s window.