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Five more stabbings as violence continues

On Saturday night, the Israeli army said a soldier was stabbed and wounded in Hebron.

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Two of the attacks took place in the West Bank city of Hebron, where the Palestinian assailants injured an Israeli soldier and a female paramilitary border police officer with knives before they were shot, according to the Israeli police and military.

Seven Israelis have died in knife and gun attacks by lone Palestinians that began earlier this month.

And a border guard killed a 24-year-old Palestinian who tried to knife him at a checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank, police said.

WAFA reported on this incident too, including allegations the woman carried out a stabbing, but the Palestinian news agency also included this caveat: “To be noted, Israeli police and army forces often resort to fatally shooting Palestinians – who are involved in alleged attacks against Israelis – while making no effort to apprehend them”.

Over the past month, eight Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, majority stabbings, and 40 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire.

The Palestinian attacker in the east Jerusalem section of Armon Hanatziv was killed in the morning by an armed Israeli civilian he had stabbed, the police said in a text message. Palestinian media said her assailant was aged 16.

In Jerusalem, Israeli security forces braced for more violence in the eastern part of the city, where numerous recent Palestinian attackers lived, and Israeli forces were tightly controlling movement.

Underlining worldwide concern, the United Nations Security Council said it would hold a special meeting to discuss the situation and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due to meet Netanyahu in Germany next week, the Israeli ambassador to Washington said. This is de Blasio’s first visit as mayor, his fourth overall and he is set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later Sunday.

Pope Francis is calling for “much courage and much strength of spirit” to bring an end to violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

The unceasing attacks by Palestinian youths against Jewish targets and the often deadly fire by Israeli police, soldiers and civilians represent how intimate and how close the conflict is. The Palestinian teen is recovering in an Israeli hospital.

Israeli leaders have accused Abbas of failing to intervene in the latest unrest – which was triggered by confrontations at another holy site, Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

“Our decision is to pursue the intifada (uprising) and continue the resistance against the Israeli occupation”, said Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s leader in Gaza.

The violence has mostly erupted in Jerusalem and the West Bank but also on the Gaza-Israel border. It has deployed soldiers in Israeli cities and erected concrete barriers outside a few Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, where most of the attackers came from.

Obama’s statement comes amid mounting clashes in Israel and the Palestinian territories that have raised fears of a full-scale uprising.

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“It’s a painful moment here in Israel, it’s a moment when I am certainly here in solidarity with the people of Israel”, de Blasio said during a visit with students from a mixed Israeli-Palestinian school.

Image Credit MSNBC