Israeli police say they are restricting access to the Old City of Jerusalem after two Israelis were killed by a Palestinian man on a street in the historic neighborhood.
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Muslims fear Israel will seek to change rules governing the site, located in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.
Late on Saturday, Palestinian knifed two men and wounded at least two others in Jerusalem’s Old City before being shot by police.
On September 23, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian teenager at a military checkpoint at Hebron in the West Bank.
“The Israeli actions are an indication that (Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin) Netanyahu is trying to avoid his obligations to end this conflict and is trying to legitimise the illegal building of Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories”, Erekat said.
It is hoped that the violence and attacks won’t escalate and make the problem worse as tensions are rising between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinians in the area.
The pair of deadly attacks on Israelis followed weeks of intense clashes at the Old City site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Temple Mount.
A Police spokeswoman said the victim was taken to hospital in moderate condition and that police ” saw the terrorist holding a knife, shot and neutralized him”.
However, according to media reports, three of them were a member of the ultra-Orthodox family heading to the Western Wall to pray.
The couple killed in the Jewish settler deaths were Rabbi Eitam Henkin and his wife Naama.
Police named the Palestinian attacker as Mohannad Shafiq Halani, aged 19, from a village near Ramallah in the West Bank.
Hamas in turn praised the attack as “heroic”.
The occupied West Bank was rocked by settler attacks on Palestinians and their property on Thursday night and Friday after a fatal shooting attack was carried out by alleged Palestinian gunmen.
Meanwhile, the army said it had made “progress” in investigating Thursday’s fatal shooting of the Henkins, with Palestinian Maan News Agency saying eight people had been arrested in Nablus.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas addressed the United Nations a day earlier and declared he was no longer bound by previous pacts with Israel, accusing the Israeli government of violating them.
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Tensions between Jews and Arabs in the area increased amid the standstill in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian authority, as the last round of peace talks ended abruptly in April 2014.
