Israel’s Cabinet approves $1.5 million aid for Kiryat Arba settlement
Published July 11, 2016
Rina, the mother of Israeli Hallel Ariel, a 13-year-old girl who was fatally stabbed by a Palestinian attacker in her home, mourns during her funeral in the Kiryat Arba settlement outside the West Bank city of Hebron, June 30, 2016. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Cabinet voted to approve a $1.5 million aid package to strengthen the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba and the Jewish community in Hebron.
The approval on Sunday comes in the wake of the murder of 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel in her bed in her Kiryat Arba home, a shooting attack on Route 60 on the car of a family from Otniel located near Hebron that left Rabbi Michael ‘Miki’ Mark dead, and a shooting attack in Gush Etzion on a car carrying a family of seven that left the head of the family injured.
“Government offices have all been recruited to assist the residents who stand heroically in the face of vicious terrorism,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in announcing the package.
About $1.1 million will be used to renovate local buildings, public areas, and stairwells, and the rest will be used for educational programming, a youth center, and other local community initiatives, the Times of Israel reported.
Also on Sunday, hundreds of residents of the West Bank and their supporters marched about 8 miles from the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Gat to the settlement of Otniel calling for more security for the settlements in the wake of the recent string of attacks. The marchers walked past the site of the attack on the Marks family.
