Palestinian teen shot in the dead dies

The tense Old City section of east Jerusalem saw another violent encounter Monday when an attacker tried to stab an Israeli policeman before being shot dead.

A recent wave of Palestinian knife attacks in Jerusalem and Israel has prompted the Israeli authorities to step up security, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the deployment 16 battalions of the paramilitary Border Police. Palestinians have been angered by events at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, and fear Israel wants to change the religious status quo at Islam’s third holiest shrine, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount. An Arab citizen of Israel stabbed four Israelis, seriously injuring a 19-year-old woman, before Israeli police apprehended him, police spokesman said.

Clashes also erupted in Beit Umar, southern West Bank, where a Palestinian killed in clashes was buried Sunday, with medics saying eight people were wounded by rubber bullets and four by live fire.

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. Another officer, Moshe Chen, was wounded on Sunday after a auto being driven by a Palestinian woman was pulled over at a checkpoint near the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim.

That attack took place near police headquarters in Jerusalem, in an area that straddles the eastern district and the predominantly Jewish west.

A source in the Palestinian security services said there had been “a malfunction in her auto, and there was no bombing”.

Read the latest analyses and opinions on the escalating violence throughout Israel and the West Bank: Israel must do what it can to prevent a new Gaza war (Haaretz Editorial); In Israel, no end to violence in sight (Amos Harel); In search of an Israeli weakling to blame for recent violence (Raviv Drucker).

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said the woman killed was aged 30 and pregnant, and her daughter was three.

Palestinian kicks a tear gas canister during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank, Saturday, October 10, 2015.

Monday’s bloodshed followed the deployment of 2,000 police reinforcements in Jerusalem, but Israeli leaders have said they have no quick fix against largely “lone wolf” assaults. Islamist rulers Hamas have ordered a series of solidarity rallies to show support to Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank.

In response to renewed rocket fire toward Israel overnight, the military said it had carried out airstrikes in Gaza targeting weapons manufacturing facilities belonging to the ruling Hamas militant group.

The Health Ministry reported Sunday that 24 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of October and more than 1,300 have been wounded by live and rubber-coated bullets.

Border clashes that broke out Friday came as Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, called the overall violence an intifada and urged further unrest. Last month an Israeli motorist was killed when Palestinians hurled stones at his vehicle in Jerusalem, causing it to crash. “It is the only path that will lead to liberation”, Ismail Haniyeh said during a sermon for weekly Muslim prayers at a mosque in Gaza City.