Palestinian teen wounds 2, day after 7 killed in Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (AP) — A 13-year-old Palestinian boy 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.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his Security Cabinet late Saturday to discuss the burst of violence — which followed a deadly Israeli military raid in the West Bank, a barrage of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and a series of Israeli airstrikes in the blockaded territory. He was expected to announce a series of punitive measures against the Palestinians later in the evening.
As the meeting began, he said his government’s response would be “strong, swift, and precise.”,
He vowed to expedite 2020 Imperial Valley Press procedures to seal off and destroy attackers’ homes, make it easier for Israeli civilians to obtain weapons permits and to punish the families of Palestinian attackers by taking away their social security and health benefits.
“We are not looking for escalation, but we are prepared for any scenario,” he said.
Saturday’s shooting in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, near the historic Old City, wounded a father and son, ages 47 and 23, paramedics said. Both were fully conscious and in moderate to serious condition in the hospital, the medics added.
As police rushed to the scene, two passers- by with licensed weapons shot and overpowered the 13-year-old attacker, police said. Police confiscated his handgun and took the wounded teen to a hospital.
Video showed police escorting the boy, wearing nothing but underwear, away from the scene and onto a stretcher, his hands cuffed behind his back. Authorities taped off the street, emergency vehicles and security forces swarmed the area and helicopters whirled overhead.
“He waited to ambush civilians on the holy Sabbath day,” Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told The Associated Press, adding that the teenager opened fire on a group of five civilians. Security footage showed the victims to be observant
Jews, wearing skullcaps and tzitzit, or knotted ritual tassels.
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, including a 70-year-old woman, in a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move not internationally recognized.
Authorities published the names of four of the victims. They included 14-year-old Asher Natan; Eli Mizrahi, 48, and his wife Natali, 45. The fourth victim was Rafael Ben Eliyahu, 56. Funerals for the victims were scheduled Saturday night.
The attacks pose pivotal test for Israel’s new farright 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 at a hospital where victims were being treated, BenGvir said he wanted the home of the gunman in Friday’s attack to be sealed off immediately as a punitive measure, lashing out at Israel’s attorney general for delaying his order.
She “is not allowing us to seal the house. In my opinion this is awful. In my opinion, it can’t be like that,” he said of the top prosecutor.
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 to Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis.
Overhauling the justice system in the country, including the attorney general’s office, has been at the top of the agenda of the new government, which says unelected judges and jurists have overwhelming powers. The divisive issue helped fuel weekly protests by Israelis who say the sweeping proposed changes would weaken the Supreme Court and undermine democracy.