U.S. condemns Palestinian attacks against Israelis

Gaza’s Hamas rulers have praised a pair of separate stabbing and shooting attacks in Jerusalem that killed two Israelis and wounded several others.

Meanwhile, in the center of the city, a Palestinian working as a technician for an Israeli telephone company drove a company van into a group of people waiting at a bus stop.

Police closed major highways leading in and out of Jerusalem, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an emergency meeting of his Security Cabinet, where police were to present a plan to halt the violence. Netanyahu said that his government is planning to take “aggressive steps” to respond to the violence and pledged to “use all means at our disposal to restore calm”.

While Israel says the rumors are unfounded, clashes have quickly spread across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It annexed East Jerusalem after a 1967 war in a move not recognised overseas. One of many assailants was killed, an ambulance service spokesman stated, & the opposite captured.

Minutes later, another Palestinian rammed his auto into a bus stop in the centre of Jerusalem before getting out and stabbing pedestrians, killing one and wounding six, police said.

Three Israeli civilians were killed Tuesday in terror attacks in Jerusalem, and 20 were wounded, the highest toll in the past two weeks of violence. The army said its troops fired on a man who tried to throw a petrol bomb at them. Five Israelis were wounded in the attacks, which came about an hour apart, one seriously and the rest lightly.

Today’s events brings the number of Israeli fatalities from attacks in the last month to seven. Adding to a growing sense of Israeli public insecurity, two Palestinians shot and stabbed passengers on a bus in Jerusalem, killing two and injuring four, police said.

There were repeated clashes at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in September between Israeli forces and Palestinian youths.

Earlier, five Israelis were injured in two stabbing attacks carried out by a single terrorist in the town of Raanana north of Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he will not allow any change to the status quo under which Jews are allowed to visit the site but non-Muslim prayer is banned, but his assurances have done little to quell alarm among Muslims across the region.

While disavowing the violence, US-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called for al-Aqsa to be “defended” from Israel, and his administration has echoed allegations swirling around Arabic social media that a few of the Palestinians killed by police had been summarily executed. “If the situation deteriorates as a result of this incitement… you will bear responsibility”. Shops have been selling pepper spray and other items that might be used in defense.

Presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Cruz condemned the attacks on Israelis.

The upscale Tel Aviv suburb of Raanana, which had never before been the scene of a terrorist attack, experienced two attacks Tuesday morning, each by one man wielding a knife on a main street.

The Israeli military said he was hurling a firebomb at a auto. The Israeli was moderately wounded and the attacker was apprehended and beaten by local residents before he was taken to a hospital.

The main Palestinian factions, Abbas’ Fatah movement and the Islamist militant Hamas group, had declared on Tuesday (Wednesday NZT) a “Day of Rage” across the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, accusing Israel of “escalating its crimes against our people”.

Leaders of the Israeli Arab community (roughly one-tenth of Israel’s population) including its elected members of parliament embark on a general strike Tuesday, October 13, followed Wednesday by a grandstand performance by Arab MKs at Al Aqsa, accompanied by a flock of Israeli and worldwide camera crews.