Clashes near Gaza border, 4 Palestinians killed

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking steps to try to defuse the situation after promising a crackdown on the “wave of terror”. Earlier, paramilitary police shot dead a militant who had opened fire at them during late-night clashes at the Palestinian Shuafat refugee camp, police said.

Tensions have surged in 11 days of violence in which four Israelis and 17 Palestinians – including several Palestinians shot by police, have been killed in Jerusalem, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and in Israeli cities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered police to bar ministers and lawmakers from visiting the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, the Haaretz daily reported on Wednesday.

Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem said there is a risk that Palestinian suspects will simply be shot, even in cases where they could be arrested.

The unrest in Jerusalem has been fueled by Palestinian allegations that Israel is plotting to change a sensitive arrangement at the holy site, revered by Jews as the spot where the biblical Temples were built and by Muslims as the place where the Prophet Muhammed is believed to have ascended to heaven. Israeli media said security personnel called to her in Arabic and Hebrew multiple times to put the weapon down and that she had waved it while yelling, “Death to police”.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, for a future state.

Under a longstanding arrangement, non-Muslims are allowed to visit, but not pray, during specific hours.

His assurances over conditions at the site, known as Temple Mount to Jews and Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, have done little to quell alarm among Muslims across the region.

The officer was lightly injured and the Palestinian assailant was killed, police said.

In what appeared to be the first revenge attack amid the violence, an Israeli man stabbed and wounded four Arabs in the southern Israeli city of Dimona, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Netanyahu “strongly condemned the harming of innocent Arabs”, saying that anyone who resorts to violence will be brought to justice. Kirby said he had no details on the Israeli attack when asked.

The Al-Aqsa compound is the third-holiest site in Islam and the most sacred in Judaism.

He was the fourth Palestinian to be killed Friday in clashes along the heavily guarded frontier.

The age limit has been set intermittently in an attempt to ensure calm as it’s mostly younger Palestinians involved in the violence.

Israeli police say a Palestinian was shot and killed after he stabbed an officer in the West Bank and tried to take his gun.