Israeli leader calls for calm amid spiraling attacks

Fresh clashes broke out at the Bet El checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah Thursday, as well as in Shuafat, where the Palestinian identified as 20-year-old Usama Faraj was killed by the Israelis.

The Palestinians, according to the IDF, began hurling rocks at soldiers and rolling burning tires at them.

Israeli police say a Palestinian woman was shot after she tried to stab an Israeli in northern Israel.

Hospital officials put the death toll at three, with 14 others wounded.

In the assault by a Jew, the assailant aged about 20 was arrested and told police he carried out the attack in the southern Israeli city of Dimona because “all Arabs are terrorists”.

The Israeli military said “More than a thousand rioters infiltrated the buffer zone engaging the forces at the security fence”. Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have lookout towers and guardposts in place just back from the buffer zone.

In Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded a 14-year-old Israeli with a vegetable peeler Friday before being arrested.

Arab Israelis are the descendants of Palestinians who remained after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and hold Israeli citizenship. It is home to the Al-Aqsa mosque and is revered by Muslims as the spot where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven and by Jews as the site of the two Jewish biblical Temples.

Hours earlier, a Jewish seminary student was wounded in a Palestinian knife attack on a main road in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu gave his directive during a security consultation last week, prior to his departure for the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and mentioned it during a subsequent cabinet meeting, the official said.

The Obama administration has condemned the ongoing rash of Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers and appealed for calm on all sides.

“These actions are mostly not organised, but they are all the result of wild and untruthful incitement from Hamas, from the Palestinian Authority, from several neighbouring counties and, no less, from the Islamic Movement in Israel”, he said.

The ambassador says a resolution also should provide “protection” for Palestinians, especially in east Jerusalem and at the Al-Aqsa mosque, a holy site at the heart of the recent clashes.

There was a Palestinian stabbing attack in the same city Thursday night.

Abbas has spoken out against violence and in favour of “peaceful, popular resistance”, but many youths are frustrated with his leadership as well as Israel’s government.

Tel Aviv witnessed its first terror incident in the current round of attacks Thursday when a Palestinian stabbed with a screwdriver and lightly injured five people, including a woman soldier, before being shot dead by an off duty soldier. Israel has adamantly denied the allegations and accused Palestinian leaders of inciting the violence and spreading lies over the shrines in east Jerusalem.

The army statement did not explain why troops did not use non-lethal crowd control weapons, such as teargas and rubber bullets, routinely used by Israeli forces against violent protests in the West Bank.

In turn, Israelis are on edge after deadly stone-throwing attacks by Palestinians and the killing of an Israeli couple in the West Bank 10 days ago. Many Muslims view these visits as a provocation and accuse Jewish extremists of plotting to take over the site. Israel has promised to ensure the delicate arrangement at the site and insists it will not allow the status quo to be changed.