Late Sunday, an Arab citizen of Israel stabbed four Israelis near the northern city of Hadera, seriously injuring a 19-year-old girl, before Israeli police apprehended him, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
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The police officer’s protective vest stopped the knife and he was unharmed. Palestinians carried out two stabbing attacks in Jerusalem on Saturday before being shot dead by police forces, the latest in a series of stabbing attacks against civilians and soldiers that have spread across Israel and the West Bank in the past week.
The attack near the kibbutz was the 15th stabbing of Israelis since October 3, but the first by an Arab Israeli to cause injury, rather than by Palestinians from east Jerusalem or the West Bank.
And with unrest threatening to spiral into a full-scale intifada, or uprising, a retaliatory Israeli air strike in Gaza overnight killed a pregnant Palestinian woman and her toddler.
Meanwhile, Palestinian medical officials said a 13-year-old boy was killed after being hit in the head by a plastic-coated metal bullet and 36 Palestinian protesters were injured in clashes in the West Bank on Sunday with Israeli troops who were also firing live rounds.
Four Israelis and 23 Palestinians have died in 12 days of bloodshed fuelled in part by Muslim anger over increasing Jewish access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.
Israeli Arabs have demonstrated in support of Palestinian protests in the occupied West Bank that have accompanied the surge in attacks. One of the attackers was shot dead by police while the other was wounded and taken to a hospital.
The government has already relaxed rules governing the use of live ammunition by security forces, and expedited the demolition of homes of Palestinians convicted of terrorist offenses.
At least 25 Palestinians, including nine attackers, have been killed by Israeli forces, while five Israelis have been killed in attacks.
Responding to cross-border rocket attacks, Israel said its aircraft targeted a Hamas facility in the Gaza Strip.
During his initial interrogation, Raed Zyud said he crashed into the bus stop by accident, and that he took out the knife to protect himself from passersby who sought to attack him.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the violence and voiced the firm belief that a negotiated two-state solution is the only way out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There have also been multiple protests inside Israel from the country’s own Arab minority, with masked demonstrators clashing with police forces.
The border police constitute the front line force in situations of quasi-terror and mass confrontations such as has prevailed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for the past two weeks. Tensions in he West Bank continued with near-daily violent demonstrations. An Israeli motorist was previously killed when his vehicle was pelted with stones on the eve of the Jewish New Year. He said four others were wounded, included Ms Hassan’s husband and son, in the strike in the southern Gaza strip.
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Mr Netanyahu quoted Ms Zoabi as saying to a Hamas newspaper that “hundreds of thousands of worshippers should go to the Al-Aksa Mosque to stand up against Israel’s conspiracy to condone violence against east Jerusalem residents”.
