JERUSALEM:A Palestinian man stabbed and wounded an Israeli teenager in Jerusalem today, just hours after another knife-wielding attacker killed an off-duty Israeli soldier and a rabbi nearby in the walled Old City, police said.
Officers shot dead both attackers, a police spokesman said, and Israel’s government announced it was barring Palestinians from entering the ancient district for two days, apart from people who lived there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met security chiefs today to discuss more action to tackle rising violence in East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, and the West Bank, areas that Israel captured in a 1967 war. In broadcast remarks, Netanyahu said the new measures would include speeding up the razing of homes of Palestinian attackers and banning those who incite violence from the Old City.
The bloodshed – which included a drive-by shooting that killed an Israeli couple in the West Bank on Thursday and an arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents in July – has triggered concerns of wider escalation. Israel’s best-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, published a banner front page headline reading “The third Intifada”, though the violence has not reached the levels of past Palestinian uprisings. Yesterday, another Palestinian stabbed to death an off-duty Israeli soldier walking with his wife and children and a rabbi who rushed to their aid, on a street near Judaism’s Western Wall, police said. Islamic Jihad later said the attack was carried out by one of its members.
A local hospital director said 22 Palestinians were wounded by live ammunition.
Palestinians have said they fear increasing visits by Jewish groups to al-Aqsa compound, revered by Jews as the site of Biblical temples, are eroding Muslim religious control there. (Reuters)
