On Wednesday, three similar stabbing attacks were carried out.
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And the acrimony seems only to be growing.
Later on Wednesday, a Jewish man was attacked with a knife outside a shopping centre in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv, police said, adding that the attacker had been overpowered. He said the attacker was an Arab without providing more details.
The Israel Defense Forces said the clashes in Gaza took place when “200 Palestinians approached the security fence in the Northern Gaza Strip”.
“The forces on site responded with fire on the main instigators in order to prevent them progressing and to disperse the riot”.
Ministers on the right, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Tourism Minister Yariv Levin, have said Abbas – who charged in a United Nations speech last week that Israel was sending “extremists” into Al-Aqsa Mosque – was “inciting” the violence.
The Al-Aqsa compound is the third-holiest site in Islam and the most sacred in Judaism.
We’re counting the dead again in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, crying over the bad reports of lives cut short, of who did what to whom, and where; of the weapons used, the unbearable grief unleashed, the vengeance chillingly invoked.
In other remarks, Netanyahu was more stern and contentious.
But in recent years, movements calling for Jewish prayer rights have repeatedly flouted the codes, causing tensions and disturbances at the compound.
In a measure meant to ease tensions, Netanyahu banned Cabinet ministers and lawmakers from the sensitive Jerusalem holy site, fearing any high-profile spectacle could further enflame tensions. “We will prosecute them, and we will be victorious”. Earlier, a Palestinian stabbed four Israelis with a screwdriver in Tel Aviv. The attack left four people lightly wounded, including the soldier.
With the attacks spilling into the Israeli heartland, Netanyahu has warned Israelis to be on guard.
Israeli policemen and Zaka emergency services volunteers carry the body of a Palestinian attacker who was shot dead by Israeli police in the southern city of Kiryat Gat, Israel, on October 7, 2015.
Two Palestinians were shot, beaten and detained during the undercover arrest raid, while another was beat and detained.
Even with Thursday’s stabbing attacks, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would not allow his people to be “dragged” into more violence with Israel.
Israel has beefed up security in response to the violence in Jerusalem, and on Thursday police set up metal detectors at the entrance to Israel’s Old City. They identified the attacker as an Arab man without providing details.
“Israeli civilians are at the forefront of a war against terrorism and must also be on maximum alert”, Netanyahu said on Wednesday after visiting a Jerusalem police headquarters.
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Palestinian protesters meanwhile clashed with Israeli forces in a number of locations in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, where a 20-year-old protester was killed by live fire, according to a Palestinian hospital official and witnesses. Six of the masked men then pulled out hand guns and moved to detain the group of Palestinians. Israeli leaders might feel their knuckles rapped, and the latest settlements expansion might be deemed “unhelpful” by the European Union or the USA – but until there’s an active intervention with financial consequences nothing will change. It later spread to Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem and to the West Bank.
