IDF forces raid West Bank home of terrorist in deadly Jerusalem attack

Violence intensified in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Sunday after Israelis were targeted in two stabbing attacks and a Palestinian was killed in a clash with Israeli troops, officials said.

Minister of Intelligence Israel Katz also announced on Sunday that “there could be a need for another Operation Defensive Shield” and that “We will toughen our measures against the Palestinians,” the Jerusalem Post reported.

Fadi Aloon, a resident of Issawiya in East Jerusalem, was killed by security forces Sunday morning after stabbing a 15-year-old Israeli in Jerusalem. On Saturday, he wrote on his Facebook page: “Either martyrdom or victory”.

Recent incursions into the site by Jewish extremists – backed by Israeli security forces – have led to numerous clashes with Palestinian Muslim worshipers.

“The political solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, through negotiations, is urgently needed to end the human suffering on all sides”, said the statement by the spokesperson of the European External Action Service. Israeli soldiers closed several checkpoints around major West Bank cities on Monday in another day of rising tension in the area.

Israeli settlers carried out dozens of violent attacks across the West Bank over the past two days in the wake of the murders of four Israeli civilians by Palestinians.

The Red Crescent says 456 Palestinians were hurt in two days of clashes. Around 300,000 Palestinians live in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, where the Old City is located.

Another 139 Palestinians have also been treated for tear gas inhalation and six for injuries sustained in beatings by Israeli security forces or settlers.

It is the first time Jerusalem’s Palestinians have been shut out of the Old City – which contains sites sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians including the Dome of the Rock, Western Wall and Church of the Holy Sepulchre – since Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem began in 1967.

Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank have been hit by a new wave of violence, raising fears of events spinning out of control.

The suspected killer, a 19-year-old Palestinian law student from Ramallah, was shot to death by police officers.

Meanwhile in Nablus, the Red Crescent said settlers prevented paramedics from performing their humanitarian duties and smashed their ambulance’s windscreen.

October 1: Netanyahu uses his United Nations speech to call for immediate direct peace talks with the Palestinians.

Saturday’s Old City attack saw a two-year-old child slightly wounded in the leg and taken to hospital.