The latest incidents come a day before US Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to arrive in the region, where he is expected to meet with leaders from both sides in a bid to ease tensions.
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The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, for its part, issued a statement on Monday accusing Israeli forces of fabricating stories about knife attacks and “planting” knives next to slain Palestinians.
In a further incident, a Palestinian tried to ram a taxi into Israelis at a West Bank junction near Jericho and then got out with a knife in his hand to stab them, before an armed Israeli at the scene shot him dead, police said. The older girl died. Soldiers shot and killed th alleged terrorist.
Since mid-September, Palestinian attacks have killed 17 Israelis, mostly in stabbings, while 84 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire.
CCTV footage showed one of the suspected attackers lunging at a man before being shot by police. “But absolutely disgusting if as it appears they were shot again while lying wounded”.
In the southern West Bank, the army prohibited Palestinians from entering 24 Jewish settlements after an Israeli woman was stabbed to death at a road junction in the area on Sunday.
Two others were also injured in the attack, including an Israeli woman who was lightly hurt, and another Israeli woman in her 20s who was injured in the stabbing, and transferred to Shaare Zedek Medical Centre in Jerusalem.
Israeli media reported that the girls’ victims were a 25-year-old Jewish man and a 70-year-old Palestinian man from Bethlehem. Israel bristled at those remarks, saying shooting attackers was self-defence.
Much of the violence has emanated from Hebron, the largest West Bank city, where hundreds of Israeli settlers live in heavily-guarded enclaves surrounded by tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Netanyahu has come under pressure to tighten security and on Monday he announced stricter controls on Palestinian vehicles and an increase in so-called “bypass roads”, which create separate routes for Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
Among the Palestinian allegations were claims that Israel has fabricated numerous recent stabbing attacks, to justify the killing of innocent Palestinians. A ricochet from one of the bullets he fired injured a passerby – an Israeli man, hospital officials said.
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Against this backdrop, Kerry’s visit is aimed at defusing the current conflict, which a few feared could spark a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada.
