Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said Israeli troops had gone to search the home of a Palestinian involved in an earlier attack.
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Fresh clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces broke out Friday in various parts of east Jerusalem and the West Bank, including near Ramallah after the funeral of Mohannad Halabi, a 19-year-old killed after allegedly stabbing two Jews to death in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday.
Human Rights Watch said Thursday that Israeli rules of engagement vis-à-vis unarmed protesters violated global law, noting that a 13-year-old Palestinian boy had been killed when security forces fired on a crowd in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. The Jewish suspect had been arrested.
Ismail Hanniyeh, the Gaza-based leader of Hamas, declared a new uprising after Friday prayers and urged his followers to ramp up attacks.
But Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and a member of Hamas’s rival Fatah group in the West Bank, said that the question of whether or not the recent violence is indeed an intifada is irrelevant for Palestinians.
Friday’s escalation came as Israeli security forces sought to prevent the further spread of Palestinian unrest.
What began as Palestinians throwing rocks and firebombs at passing cars and police has morphed into a deadly shooting and knife attacks by Palestinians on Israeli civilians and soldiers.
Four Arabs have been stabbed in a town in southern Israel.
The protests were in solidarity with Palestinians in Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where tensions have surged in 10 days of violence in which four Israelis and at least eight Palestinians have been killed.
Hussein warned that “more bloodshed will only lead to more hatred on both sides” and that he is deeply concerned about the increasing number of attacks by both settlers and Palestinians.
The IDF also shot a Palestinian man armed with a knife who reportedly attempted to enter the West Bank settlement of Negohot, north of Hebron.
The violence comes amid an tense mood in Israel and the West Bank.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians also work in Israel, particularly in construction.
The hilltop religious site is a frequent flashpoint and its fate is a core issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many Muslims view these visits as a provocation and accuse Jewish extremists of plotting to take over the site. Jews refer to it as Temple Mount, site of Judaism’s ancient temple and the holiest place in the religion.
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But Palestinians say that in the last two months, there has been a new development where Israel has intermittently restricted a few Muslims from the compound when Jews visit.
