Israeli Strike in Gaza Kills Palestinian Woman, Child as Violence Continues

An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed a pregnant woman and her toddler, as a Palestinian woman set off a bomb in the West Bank Sunday in the first such attack in over a week of violence.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of a surge in Palestinian shooting and stabbing attacks that has left four Israelis dead, and a few think his hardline political rivals would do a better job, two new polls show.

Israel says it carried out airstrikes on two Hamas weapons factories in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.

Police, who saw the men bleeding from stab wounds in their upper bodies and the knife-wielding Palestinian running toward them, opened fire, killing the attacker.

Hours earlier, a Jewish seminary student was seriously injured when he was stabbed in the neck by a Palestinian near a light rail station in the French Hill area of East Jerusalem, police said.

Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem have launched daily stabbing and rock-throwing attacks over the past week, including two stabbings in Jerusalem on Saturday.

Four Israelis and 23 Palestinians have died in 12 days of violence, that has spread from Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Israel’s interior and Hamas-ruled Gaza. According to Palestinian reports, seven rioters were killed by IDF fire at Friday’s unrest along the border fence near Nahal Oz.

In the West Bank, central Hebron burned with thick smoke from flaming tires as young Palestinian men clashed with Israeli police and soldiers.

A few 1,500 people gathered in the Israeli-Arab city of Nazareth Saturday to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinians.

Rescue services said the soldier was taken to hospital in a critical condition. Muslims refer to it as the Noble Sanctuary, which includes the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Netanyahu says that along with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, the Islamic Movement was responsible for spreading lies about Israel’s supposed intentions regarding a sensitive Jerusalem holy site that is sacred to both Muslims and Jews. According to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, the Palestinian Authority called for the meeting due to Israel’s “escalated violence against the Palestinian people” and in particular what it called Israeli “assaults” against Al Aqsa.

After several Palestinian knife attacks over the past week, one of which killed two Israelis in Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s office on Saturday announced the deployment of 13 additional units of the Israeli Border Police in Jerusalem and in other parts of Israel.

The Palestinian Health Ministry revealed that a 13-year-old teenager, Marwan Barbakh and another, 15-year-old Omar Othman, were shot with live ammunition in eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Middle East peacemakers, including the United States, Russia, the United Nations, and the European Union, were expected to arrive in the area sometime on Tuesday to discuss the Israeli and Palestinian unrest.

Tensions have also been stoked by Palestinian frustration over the failure to make progress in peace talks towards Palestinian statehood amid Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank.

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad also vowed revenge for the “massacre of Palestinian demonstrators” on the Israel-Gaza border.