New round of attacks on Israelis in West Bank

“They want to kill us”.

Since early October, Israel has detained more than 1,600 Palestinians from east Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinian sources said.

On Friday however, two Israelis were shot and wounded by unknown assailants as they visited a flashpoint holy site in the city along with several thousand others, the army said.

Searches are underway for their assailants, it added. Her death was pronounced at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek hospital, which reported that she was dead upon arrival.

Around 4,000 Jewish worshippers were visiting Hebron on Friday and Saturday as part of a religious pilgrimage centred around the biblical matriarch Sarah, who according to tradition was buried in a field which eventually became part of the city Hebron.

Two Palestinians were wounded by live fire, Palestinian medics said. Gaza militants inspired by the Islamic State group have taken responsibility for recent rocket attacks.

Later Friday, an Israeli was seriously wounded by shots to the head fired from a passing auto on the outskirts of Hebron, the military said. Israeli media said the victim was 19 years old and critically injured.

The military said the auto slowed down and then sped toward the soldiers. It said troops jumped out of the way unharmed and opened fire. Her son Ayoub, 52, denied his mother, who started driving in her 50s, meant to harm anyone. The woman’s family contested the claim that she would have tried to ram the soldiers.

Israeli police check the damaged vehicle of a Palestinian woman after she was shot dead by Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Hebron on November 6.

Palestinian-Israeli peace talks have been frozen since the end of March of 2014, after nine month of U.S.-brokered talks failed to achieve progress to end the decade-long conflict.

The poll examined the attitudes of Israeli citizens – both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel – as tensions and unrest soar amid growing violence. “I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces”, writes Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “[and] their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government”.

While cars careening into crowds was the trend in terror last year- with hit songs in Gaza and the West Bank praising “martyrs” behind the wheel- this year Hamas and Palestinian Authority leaders, clerics and newspaper editors are openly encouraging stabbings that have so far killed a dozen and wounded 167 since October 1.

If seemingly random and unpredictable attacks on Israelis were to continue for a significant period of time, a few Palestinians feel that this just might cause enough Israelis to conclude that perpetual occupation and oppression are not, in fact, the best of all possible worlds for them, and that the quality of their lives would be enhanced by ending the occupation and permitting the Palestinian people to enjoy the same freedom and human dignity – whether in two states or in one – that Jewish Israelis demand for themselves.

Information for this article was contributed by Ian Deitch and Mohammed Daraghmeh of The Associated Press.