A Palestinian suspected of killing a young Israeli woman has been arrested in a raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Israeli security officials said on Saturday.
The body of Ori Ansbacher, 19, was found on Thursday evening in the south of Jerusalem, and she was buried on Friday in the Israeli settlement of Tekoa.
Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service named the suspect as 29-year-old Arafat Irfaiya from the flashpoint city of Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank.
“The interrogation of the suspect is ongoing and is focused in particular on the motives for the murder,” it said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the security services for the speed with which they arrested “the abhorrent murderer”.
“The long arm of Israel will reach whoever hurts us and we will settle accounts with them,” the premier said in a statement.
The Jewish state’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, earlier accused the UN Security Council of staying silent in the face of what he charged was the complicity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) of president Mahmoud Abbas in such attacks.
“The PA maintains its policy of paying salaries for terrorists and educating its youth with incitement, and a 19-year-old girl was brutally murdered in Israel,” he said.
“The Security Council has the responsibility and moral duty to make a clear condemnation of this barbaric murder and to act firmly against the culture of terror in the Palestinian Authority.”
The West Bank was hit by a bout of unrest in December as tensions eased in the Gaza Strip after months of violent protests.
The future of the West Bank is set to be one of the main issues in the Israeli election campaign ahead of a nationwide vote on April 9.
Netanyahu’s main challenger Benny Gantz, a former army chief running on a centre-right ticket, has hinted that he may be ready to pull back from the territory as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners are campaigning for the unilateral annexation of large swathes of the Palestinian territory.
Some 650,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem.
The settlements are seen as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to peace, as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.