JERUSALEM HIT BY ‘DAY OF RAGE’
TEL AVI V • Jerusalem suffered its bloodiest day yet in Israel’s wave of unrest as three Israelis were killed by Palestinian attackers who opened fire on a bus and drove a car into pedestrians.
The surge in violence that also hit the city of Raanana Tuesday came as the main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, declared a “Day of Rage”, accusing Israel of “escalating its crimes against our people”.
In Jerusalem, two attackers shot and stabbed passengers on board a crowded bus during the morning rush hour, leaving two Israelis dead, including a 60-yearold man, and 16 others were injured. Both perpetrators were shot dead by a police officer.
The attack took place minutes after a Palestinian rammed his car into a bus stop, then got out of his vehicle and began hacking bystanders with a long knife. One person was killed and the attacker was shot and later died from his wounds.
Eight Israelis have died in a string of stabbings, shootings and the stoning of a car, while 29 Palestinians — including 12 identified by Israel as attackers — have been killed. In new bloodshed, a 27-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead in a protest in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The Israeli military said he was hurling a firebomb at a car.
The near-simultaneous attacks, along with two stabbings in the central Israeli city of Raanana, marked the most serious outbreak of violence since the current round of tensions erupted.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, held an emergency security cabinet meeting after the attacks, and in an address to the nation Tuesday night pledged to teach Israel’s opponents that “terror doesn’t pay” and that Israel was “here to stay, forever”.
“Today we will decide on a series of additional aggressive steps in our war against terrorists and inciters,” Netanyahu said in a speech to parliament. “We will use, and not hesitate to use, all means at our disposal to restore calm.”
Channel 2 TV said measures under consideration included a deployment of Israeli soldiers in the streets of Jerusalem to assist police, surrounding Palestinian neighbourhoods in the eastern part of the city with troops, stepping up demolitions of attackers’ homes, and stripping the families of attackers of their residence rights.
A lockdown on East Jerusalem was being considered because more than 80 per cent of the 23 stabbing attacks in this month’s spate of violence have been perpetrated by East Jerusalem residents with Israeli ID cards, according to figures from Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, cited in the Haaretz newspaper.
Tuesday’s attacks followed a stabbing in the East Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Zeev by two Palestinian teenagers on Monday that left two Israelis critically wounded.
A video has emerged showing one of the attackers — Ahmad Manasra, a 13-year-old — writhing in pain and covered in blood lying on tram tracks after he was shot by the police. Around him, Israelis are seen shouting profanities. The video was circulated on Palestinian social networks.
Netanyahu said that the context of the boy first stabbing Israelis and being treated by paramedics was missing from the video.
But many Palestinians vehemently disagreed. Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said: “These images which show an act of complete inhumanity probably provoked many Palestinians to act today. The younger population feel oppressed, deprived of their rights; they feel a lack of freedom, they are impoverished and they’ve been suffering from this occupation all their life — all they have is depression and poverty.”
Arab Israelis held a mass protest rally in solidarity with the Palestinians, with crowds of around 20,000 people taking to the streets in the northern city of Sakhnin.
But Mike Herzog, a former Israeli army chief, said the escalation of violence and protests did not mean that the events indicated the onset of a Palestinian intifada as happened in the late Eighties and in the last decade.
The Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, was “trying to avert a bigger friction on the ground between Palestinians and Israelis”, he said, while noting that the Authority was losing its legitimacy among young Palestinians.
“I think politically they don’t have much of an effective role to play, and those young people don’t really listen to them”.
Barghouti, however, said he had no doubt that a third intifada was in full swing. “The reason is clear — it’s the military Israeli occupation of Palestinians,” he said.
WE WILL USE, AND NOT HESITATE TO USE, ALL MEANS AT OUR DISPOSAL TO RESTORE CALM.