On Tuesday evening, Israeli settler leaders were told there will be no additional settlement construction for now in the wake of the attacks. Ariel said he would take up the issue directly with Netanyahu on Thursday. Earlier, a Palestinian stabbed four Israelis with a screwdriver in Tel Aviv.
Advertisement
Palestinian protesters meanwhile clashed with Israeli forces in a number of locations in the West Bank.
Jerusalem’s mayor says rumors have led to violence in the West Bank.
In the attack outside the mall, which occurred in the city of Petah Tikva, police said civilians apprehended the suspected Palestinian assailant after he stabbed and slightly wounded a man. Barkat said the city’s students had been “abandoned” and that the looming threat of violence made it impossible for them to go to school.
He said a “prompt and transparent” probe into the killing of a Bethlehem teenager by the Israeli army during rioting on Monday would serve to determine “whether the use of force was proportional”.
Muhannad Halabi, the 19-year-old Palestinian terrorist who carried out Saturday’s fatal stabbing attack in the Old City, wrote on Facebook just a few hours before the incident that “the third intifada is already here”. Police closed off the intersection where the attack took place.
Confrontations flared up in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound three weeks ago. The office said that both Palestinian and Jewish politicians were barred, and the ban was open-ended. At least 171 Palestinians were wounded in the clashes, it said.
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers slashed the tires of Palestinian cars in Beit Iksa near Jerusalem, Palestine’s official Wafa news reported.
Abbas spoke to business leaders on Thursday in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
During their phone conversation Sunday, Abbas urged the United Nations chief to swiftly respond to the Palestinian request of global protection before “matters get out of control”.
“Our people will not put up with how the Jews humiliate us-our brothers, our sisters, and our mothers-at Al-Aqsa mosque”, Halabi wrote.
“Immediately upon getting off the bus, he began to stab a citizen, who had been on the sidewalk, in the upper body”, the police confirmed in a statement. They identified the attacker as an Arab man without providing details. He said one of the men was shot before being detained and taken in for questioning.
The stabbing was the latest in a series of attacks against Israelis in recent years. Jerusalem-with its mixed population, density of holy sites and attempts by Jewish hardliners to extend their presence in mainly-Arab neighbourhoods-is a particular hotspot. It later spread to Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem and to the West Bank.
The area is the most sensitive flashpoint of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and efforts by Israeli activists and rightist politicians to promote greater Jewish access to the site have alarmed many Palestinians.
Advertisement
Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, blames the attacks on “incitement” by the Palestinian Authority.
