NEW STABBING IN JERSUALEM, PALESTINE UNREST CONTINUES

JERUSALEM: A new stabbing in Jerusalem’s Old City and a car attack spread more fear among Israelis on Monday as Palestinian unrest showed little sign of ending after nearly two weeks of violence.

Frustrated Palestinian youths have defied President Mahmud Abbas as well as an Israeli security crackdown by rioting in annexed east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, while 16 stabbings having targeted Jews since October 3.

There have been warnings of the risk of a full-scale Palestinian uprising, or third intifada.

In the latest stabbing, an Arab man attacked a policeman with a knife at an entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City and was shot dead by security forces.

The police officer’s protective vest stopped the knife and he was unharmed. The attacker was shot dead by other officers.

Police identified the attacker as an Arab without saying whether he was Palestinian or Arab Israeli. The incident occurred at the Old City’s Lions Gate.

On Sunday night, four Jews were attacked near a kibbutz in northern Israel by an Arab Israeli who rammed them with his car and then lunged at them with a knife.

The Israeli army said that two soldiers were hit by the car, with one of them seriously injured, and two civilians were stabbed.

Stabbing attacks have killed two Israelis and wounded around 20. The violence began on October 1, when an alleged Hamas cell shot dead a Jewish settler couple in the West Bank in front of their children.

It followed repeated clashes at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in September between Israeli security forces and Palestinian youths.

The unrest has spread to the Gaza Strip, hit by three wars with Israel since 2008. Clashes along the border left nine Palestinians dead from Israeli fire on Friday and Saturday.

On Sunday, an Israeli air strike in retaliation for two rockets fired at Israel demolished a house in northern Gaza, killing a woman and her two-year-old daughter.

Israel said the air strike targeted two arms workshops of Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip.