“The state of Israel is fighting with a strong fist against the attackers and those that send them”, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in an e-mailed statement late Saturday.
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Video circulated by Palestinian activists showed a young man wearing a kippa brandishing a pistol as shots rang out before Israeli soldiers moved in to pull him away from a body lying on the ground.
Mr. Netanyahu criticized the US last week with it’s assessment that Israel has used excessive force in response to the stabbing attacks.
An Israeli soldier has been killed in a shooting at a bus station in Beersheba.
In a sign that tensions continue to simmer between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli police Sunday began erecting a concrete barrier between a Jewish and Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem, according to the Associated Press. Israel said a Palestinian attempted to stab an Israeli civilian, who was carrying a gun and then shot and killed the attacker.
The other three stabbing attacks Saturday took place in the West Bank city of Hebron, a frequent flashpoint where a few hundred Jewish settlers live in close proximity to tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Majdalani explained that the draft resolution was put forth by the Palestinian leadership and focuses mainly on placing Palestinians under worldwide protection in order to “cease the continuous Israeli crimes against the Palestinians”.
Israel has struggled to contain near-daily attacks by Palestinian assailants. The fact that Israeli police and civilians shoot people coming at them with a knife and murder in their heart is being criticized by the familiar cast of Palestinian apologists. They later told Israeli police Palestinians attacked them, accusing Palestinian security forces of participating in the fight.
The 15-member council met in an emergency session to discuss weeks of escalating violence between Israel and the Palestinians in Jerusalem and the territories.
On Friday, Palestinian assailants threw petrol bombs at the West Bank compound on Friday, committing the first assault on a religious site in the region, in which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned by saying extremists were trying to turn the current conflict into a religious one.
“It’s important for both [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu… and [Palestinian] president [Mahmud] Abbas and other people in positions of power, to try to tamp down rhetoric that may feed violence or anger or misunderstanding”. We’ve just seen it in a Jewish holy site, Joseph’s Tomb.
Israel will protect the holy sites, will guard the status quo.
“Israel is not the problem at the Temple Mount, Israel is the solution”, he told his Cabinet.
That same day, State Department spokesman John Kirby attributed the violence to Israeli actions, charging that “The status quo has not been observed, which has led to a lot of the violence”.
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With neither Israeli nor Palestinian citizenship, Palestinian Jerusalemites carry Israeli-issued residency papers.
