The Israeli military said Friday the West Bank will be closed off until the end of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot on Sunday, due to security concerns following a Palestinian shooting attack this week that killed four civilians.
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The announcement of the suspension of entry permits for thousands of Palestinians during Ramadan was announced on Thursday morning.
The Israeli army sealed off the village of Yatta, south of Hebron, where the two assailants lived. Police said they were raiding metal shops believed to be making the makeshift weapons.
Meanwhile, Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian legislator and head of the Palestinian National Initiative political grouping, said the new restrictions were “collective punishments that do not solve the problem, they merely enhance and aggravate the oppression of occupation”. It was the deadliest single incident since an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in November 2014 that killed five.
The shooting occurred at Max Brenner, a chocolates restaurant located in the Sarona Market shopping complex and luxury apartment tower.
The statement condemned “in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, Israel”, and the members of the Council “expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims and to the Government of Israel”.
One of the suspected gunmen was injured and is now in the hospital, according to Haaretz. “I am also shocked to see Hamas welcome the terror attack”, he said in a statement.
“We saw the terrorists, and they started to run after us”, Sassi told CNN on Thursday.
The government also said it was sending two additional battalions – amounting to hundreds more troops – into the occupied West Bank.
Tensions over Jewish access to a volatile and contested Jerusalem holy site, revered by Muslims as Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and Jews as Temple Mount, have fuelled the violence.
He said he knew from their clothes that they were from the West Bank.
WASHINGTON (TNS) – Saudi Arabia is fending off a growing number of terror attacks inside its borders even as it tries to lead a multinational counterterrorism coalition in a financial and physical battle with Islamic State and al-Qaida, a senior Saudi official said Wednesday.
The attack has presented Israel’s newly configured Cabinet, and its firebrand new defense minister, with its first big test. A relatively muted response by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet reflected the lack of options that Israel seems to have as it grapples with a nine-month wave of violence.
Most of the Palestinians were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities. It was unclear how long that measure would last. The UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, said “all must reject violence and say no to terror”.
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Netanyahu visited the scene minutes after arriving back from a two-day visit to Moscow.
