Israeli returns to wave of violence

Netanyahu vows ‘harsh’ response to Palestinian attacks

Palestinians carry an injured man during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin on Sunday. Israeli troops shot and wounded at least six Palestinians in violence during an arrest raid in the Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian hospital director said.
Palestinians carry an injured man during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin on Sunday. Israeli troops shot and wounded at least six Palestinians in violence during an arrest raid in the Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian hospital director said.

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened on Sunday to wage a "harsh offensive against Palestinian Islamic terrorism" as he returned to a country battered by a wave of deadly violence.

photo

AP

An Israeli border policeman checks papers at the entrance to the Old City in Jerusalem on Sunday.

"We are in an all-out war against terrorism and we will wage it aggressively," Netanyahu wrote in a Facebook post as he was on his way back from New York, where he spoke last week at the United Nations. He said he was heading straight from the airport to a meeting with his top security officials.

But returning to a country in a grim mood on the eve of a Jewish holiday that was meant to end the High Holy Days on a festive note, Netanyahu faced a predicament. As Israelis debated whether the string of recent attacks by Palestinians, which appeared to lack any orchestrating group, amounted to a third "intifada," or uprising, Israeli political analysts said that Netanyahu would have to calibrate his response so that it would be effective without leading to further escalation.

"A very harsh response can get out of hand," said Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Netanyahu, who was elected to a third consecutive term this year, has built his career on a reputation for countering terrorism.

"The rhetoric was always great," Avineri said. "The question is how to translate it."

Netanyahu and others in his rightist government have accused President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority of inciting violence and giving tacit support to terrorism, not least by failing to promptly condemn the gun and knife attacks that claimed the lives of four Israelis in the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem over the last few days.

A Palestinian from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya stabbed and wounded a 15-year-old Jewish boy on a road outside the Old City about 4 a.m. Sunday, according to police. The Palestinian, identified as Fadi Alon, 21, was fatally shot by police officers. Video footage showed Alon being shot apparently as he was trying to flee, with Israeli civilians in pursuit and shouting "Shoot him!" as the police arrived.

In a rare crackdown, the Israeli authorities took the unusual measure of barring most of Jerusalem's Palestinian residents from entering the Old City for two days. Only Israeli citizens, tourists and Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship or live, work or study in the Old City were given access, as well as Palestinians going to worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque -- though men under the age of 50 were also temporarily banned from praying there.

The latest violence comes after weeks of escalating tensions and confrontations around the contested Old City compound that houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, Palestinian leaders including Abbas have accused Israel of plotting to divide the site, a charge that Netanyahu has repeatedly denied.

Two Israeli men stabbed to death by a Palestinian teenager in the Old City on Saturday night were buried in Jerusalem on Sunday. One, Rabbi Aharon Bennett, 21, from the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit in the West Bank, was an army private. His wife and toddler were wounded in the attack. The other, Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, was a resident of the Old City. Hearing the commotion in the alley below his apartment, he had gone outside to try to help the Bennett family, according to the authorities and his relatives.

Yisrael Katz, Israel's minister of transportation, said the Israeli response to the upsurge in attacks could soon echo Operation Defensive Shield, the intense 2002 military campaign at the height of the second intifada. Then, Israeli forces reinvaded the Palestinian cities of the West Bank and imposed strict limitations on Palestinian movement in an effort to curb Palestinian suicide bombings in Israeli cities.

In the West Bank on Sunday, Israeli troops shot and wounded at least 6 Palestinians in an arrest raid in the Jenin refugee camp, a Palestinian hospital director said. In 2002, the refugee camp was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the second Palestinian intifada.

Monther Irshaid, director of the Khalil Suleiman Hospital in Jenin, said the Palestinians were shot in the legs with live bullets and two suffered serious leg injuries.

Late Sunday, Gaza militants fired two rockets at Israel causing no damage or injuries, the military said.

Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a close aide to Abbas, said Israel was planning another Defensive Shield because Netanyahu was facing increasing international isolation while the Palestinians were gaining international support.

"They want more Palestinian blood," Erekat told the official Voice of Palestine radio, adding, "We will protect ourselves."

Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, primarily blamed Abbas for the violence but demanded steps from Netanyahu, including the rearrest of Palestinian prisoners released in a prisoner exchange, the freeing of the "bound hands" of Israeli soldiers, and the building of a new neighborhood or settlement in the West Bank as a response to every attack.

Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.

A Section on 10/05/2015

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