Teen wounds 2 in Jerusalem a day after synagogue attack
JERUSALEM — A 13-year-old Palestinian opened fire in east Jerusalem on Saturday, wounding two Israelis, officials said, a day after another attacker killed seven outside a synagogue in the deadliest attack in the city since 2008.
The shooting in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, wounded a 47-year-old father and his 23-year-old son, paramedics said.
Two passers-by with licensed weapons shot and overpowered the 13-yearold attacker, police said. Police confiscated his handgun and took the wounded teen to a hospital. Video showed police escorting a wounded teen away from the scene and onto a stretcher with his hands cuffed behind his back.
“He waited to ambush civilians on the holy Sabbath day,” said Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne, adding that the teenager opened fire on five civilians. Security footage showed the victims to be observant Jews.
Saturday’s events — on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s arrival in the region — raised the possibility of even greater conflagration in one of the bloodiest months in Israel and the occupied West Bank in several years. On Friday, a Palestinian gunman killed at least seven people in a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move not internationally recognized.
The attacks pose a pivotal test for Israel’s new far-right government. Its firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has presented himself as an enforcer of law and order and grabbed headlines for his promises to take even stronger action against the Palestinians.
Speaking to reporters, Ben-Gvir said he wants homes of Palestinian attackers sealed off immediately as a punitive measure, lashing out at Israel’s attorney general for delaying his order. He also called for demolishing dozens of Palestinian homes that Israel says were illegally built in east Jerusalem, granting more gun licenses to Israelis and applying the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security Cabinet to discuss further responses to recent Palestinian attacks. At the opening of the meeting, he said the government’s response will be “strong, swift and precise.”
He vowed to expedite the procedures to seal off and destroy attackers’ homes.
The Israeli army said it had deployed another battalion to the West Bank on Saturday, adding hundreds of troops to a presence already on heightened alert.
In the Jenin refugee camp, the site of a deadly Israeli military raid on Thursday that fueled the latest escalation, footage showed Palestinians cheering in celebration of Saturday’s shooting. Palestinian detainees who celebrated in prison after Friday’s attack were placed in solitary confinement, the Israeli prison service said.