Israeli seriously wounded in latest Jerusalem stabbing

On Wednesday, an Israeli man in his mid-30s shot an 18-year-old Palestinian after she stabbed him, according to Israeli police. The office said that both Palestinian and Jewish politicians were barred, and the ban was open-ended.

With the attacks spilling into the Israeli heartland, Netanyahu has warned Israelis to be on guard.

Because of the violence, Israel announced Sunday it was reinstating restrictions on access to Jerusalem’s Old City.

Netanyahu also listed a number of steps Israel has taken in a bid to contain the violence, including the demolition of attackers’ homes and tougher punishment for Palestinian stone throwers.

The clashes in Gaza follow what has appeared to be a wave of attacks on civilians in Israel. You sense it when Palestinian residents of this holy city, treated with animosity and suspicion, are deafened by the maddening hum of Israeli surveillance helicopters, when they face routine stop-and-searches and arrests by border police and often violent harassment from Jewish settlers.

The spokeswoman said those injured had been attacked “for nationalist reasons, because they were Arabs”. The violence later spread to Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem and to the West Bank, and on Tuesday there were disturbances in Jaffa, a largely Palestinian area of Tel Aviv.

In Tel Aviv, a female Israeli soldier was stabbed with a screwdriver, allegedly by a Palestinian.

Earlier, Samri said a Palestinian teenager stabbed a 25-year-old Israeli in the neck in Jerusalem, wounding him seriously, before police arrested the attacker.

“I thought they were all going to kill me”, she said.

The knife attack in Jerusalem’s Old City, in which a Palestinian woman stabbed a Jewish man before being shot and seriously wounded, was the second in the walled heart of the city in days.

In a separate incident, the Maan news agency reported that two Palestinians had been shot and injured near the village of Dar Salah, east of Bethlehem, after an attack on an Israeli settler. Including Thursday’s incident, six Palestinians have been killed in the unrest.

The Tel Aviv attack occurred just across the road from the Kirya military compound, which also houses the defense ministry.

Netanyahu has beefed up the military presence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Video footage shows undercover Israeli forces beating a Palestinian youth.

“The death of a child after security forces used live ammunition against demonstrators should be a wake-up call for Israeli officials”, Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East director, said in a statement. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, told Palestinian media that Israel does not want an escalation in the conflict. Palestinians have repeatedly barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque there, and hurled stones, firebombs and fireworks at the police.

The spate of “lone-wolf” stabbing attacks has alarmed authorities and unsettled Israelis, with Jerusalem’s mayor urging people with gun licenses to carry their weapons and Israeli leaders vowing to quash the violence though apparently stumped over how to do so.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says the man attacked the soldier after getting off a bus in the city of Kiryat Gat. Israeli leaders might feel their knuckles rapped, and the latest settlements expansion might be deemed “unhelpful” by the European Union or the U.S. – but until there’s an active intervention with financial consequences nothing will change.

Correction: A previous version of this report incorrectly characterized the Palestinian Authority’s role in the West Bank.

In all, four Israelis have been killed in stabbings by Palestinian attackers and a roadside shooting in recent days.