Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after the Tel Aviv bus stabbing incident, accusing him of "inciting" violence against Jews.
Netanyahu equated the bus attack, which Israeli police have called a 'terror act', to the Paris terror attacks, and also condemned the International Criminal Court's inquiry into war crimes in Gaza, in the same breath.
"The attack is a direct result of the Palestinian Authority's venomous incitement against the Jews and their state. The same terror tries to hurt us in Paris, Brussels and everywhere," said Netanyahu after Wednesday's incident, according to Haaretz.
""Hamas, Abbas's partners in unity government, hurried to welcome this act — the same Hamas that announced it will sue Israel in the ICC. Abbas is responsible for both the incitement and the dangerous move at the ICC," he said.
Israeli right-wing politician Naftali Bennett went a step ahead to call the accused "agents" of Abbas.
"When Abbas incites day and night against the Jews on television, when he glofiries and gives cash prizes to murderers of Jews, he makes himself the dealer of knives, and the terrorists are just his agents," Bennett said, according to Haaretz.
israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman also accused the Palestinian Authority for the attack.
"Those behind the Tel Aviv attack stand behind Rahat riots and Jerusalem attacks: Abbas, Hamas leader Haniyeh, Raed Saleh, Haneen Zoabi, Ahmed Tibi and their partners. It's all part of the same process of undermining Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state," he said.
The accusations by Israeli authorities came soon after Hamas praised the bus attack as a 'heroic act'.
At least 12 people are said to have been injured after a young Palestinian man unleash a stabbing attack on a bus in Tel Aviv.
