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Israel Restricts Palestinian Access to Jerusalem’s Old City Israel’s Netanyahu Vows ‘Harsh Offensive’ in Response to Wave of Violence
(about 1 hour later)
JERUSALEM — The Israeli authorities barred most Palestinians, including residents of Jerusalem, from entering the Old City on Sunday except to worship at the Al Aqsa Mosque, where men under 50 were also not allowed. It was a rare crackdown after the previous night’s fatal stabbing of two ultra-Orthodox men, the second deadly attack by Palestinians against Israeli families in three days. JERUSALEM — Under heavy domestic pressure from critics on both the right and left, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened on Sunday to wage a “harsh offensive against Palestinian Islamic terrorism” as he arrived back to a country battered by a wave of deadly violence.
Hours after the stabbing, Israeli police early Sunday shot and killed a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem who they said had stabbed a 15-year-old Jewish boy on the road outside the Old City. “We are in an all-out war against terrorism and we will wage it aggressively,” Mr. 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.
News organizations also reported clashes in many areas of the occupied West Bank that injured more than 100 Palestinians, including dozens in the Jenin refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers used live ammunition and tear gas to quell a riot during an early morning raid. But returning to a country in a grim mood on the eve of a Jewish holiday that was meant to bring a festive end of the High Holy Days, Mr. 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 Mr. Netanyahu would have to calibrate his response so that it would be effective without leading to further escalation.
About 3,500 Israeli police officers swarmed Jerusalem on Sunday, closing off some of its Arab neighborhoods, as a growing chorus of Israeli politicians and analysts termed the rising violence a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising. Yisrael Katz, the transportation minister and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the Israeli response could soon echo Operation Defensive Shield, the intense 2002 military campaign to curb suicide bombings that imposed strict curfews and movement restrictions on West Bank cities. “A very harsh response can get out of hand,” said Shlomo Avineri, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu, who was elected to a third consecutive term this year, has built his career on a reputation for countering terrorism.
“We will intensify our steps against the Palestinians,” Mr. Katz told Israel’s Army Radio on Sunday morning. “It may be possible that we will have to embark on an Operation Defensive Shield II.” “The rhetoric was always great,” Professor Avineri said. “The question is how to translate it.”
Mr. Netanyahu, who was returning to Israel from New York, where he spoke last week at the United Nations, said he had called an emergency consultation with his security team for Sunday afternoon “to decide on a harsh offensive against Palestinian Islamic terrorism.” Mr. 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.
“We are in an all-out war against terrorism and we will wage it aggressively,” Mr. Netanyahu said on his Facebook page, denouncing Palestinian leaders who had described “the despicable terrorist in Jerusalem as a hero.” Violence struck again at around 4 a.m. on Sunday when 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, according to the police. The Palestinian, identified as Fadi Alon, 21, was fatally shot by police officers. Video footage showed Mr. Alon being shot apparently as he was trying to flee, with Israeli civilians in pursuit and shouting “Shoot him!” as the police arrived.
The escalation on both sides came after weeks of intensifying violence and harsh political recriminations over the contested Old City compound surrounding the Al Aqsa Mosque. 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.
Palestinian leaders, including the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, have accused Israel of trying to divide the site, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, though Mr. Netanyahu has consistently vowed not to change the status quo there, which bars non-Muslim prayer. 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 Mr. Abbas have accused Israel of plotting to divide the site, a charge that Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly denied.
Palestinians have praised the recent attacks as retribution for the increasing visits to the site by religious Jews, some of whom have called for the building of a third holy temple in place of the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine, at the same site. 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.
Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said he did not know the last time similar restrictions had been imposed on entry to the Old City itself; the Israeli news site Haaretz said it was unprecedented. The authorities declared access to the ancient stone-walled complex of Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy sites and shopping bazaars limited for the next two days to Israeli citizens, tourists, and Palestinians who live, study or work there. Hundreds of blue-clad Israeli police officers, and more heavily armed border guards in khaki uniforms, stood sentry at new barricades outside the Old City’s gates and patrolled its alleyways checking identification cards. The usually crammed Muslim quarter was eerily quiet; most shops were closed in a strike to protest the restrictions. At one point, officers tackled a young man near where the attacks occurred, ordering friends who rushed to his defense to “get back” and then telling them all to “get out of here.”
“Those measures have been made in order to prevent any more attacks from taking place,” Mr. Rosenfeld said. Other youths gathered around as a man scrubbed blood he said was from the previous night’s violence off the floor of his shop.
The Old City had 37,710 residents in 2013, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 28,180 of them in the Muslim quarter. It is one of the region’s top tourist destinations, as Christians retrace the path Jesus is said to have walked on the day of his crucifixion, along the Via Dolorosa, and Jews flock to the Western Wall, a remnant of the retaining wall that surrounded the ancient temple. In all, about 3,500 Israeli police officers fanned out across Jerusalem. In Issawiya, a frequent site of tension and violence, clashes broke out between local residents and the police. “We cannot even leave by foot; the area is under complete military closure,” a resident, Muhammad Dari, said by telephone.
Palestinians in the West Bank already need a permit to legally enter Jerusalem, so they visit the Old City far less frequently than the more than 200,000 who live in East Jerusalem, the vast majority of whom are not citizens and thus were barred on Sunday. Clashes also broke out between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in several locations around the West Bank, including familiar friction points like Hebron. Montaser Abu Hajia, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp, said that more than two dozen Palestinians had been injured by Israeli forces when clashes broke out there during a pre-dawn raid by the military.
On Sunday, hundreds of blue-clad Israeli police officers, and more heavily armed border guards in khaki uniforms, stood sentry at new barricades outside the Old City’s gates and patrolled its alleyways checking identification cards. The usually crammed Muslim quarter was eerily quiet; most shops were shuttered in a strike to protest the restrictions. At one point, officers tackled a young man near where the attack happened late Saturday, ordering friends who rushed to his defense to “get back” and then telling them all to “get out of here.” 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.
Other youths gathered as a man scrubbed blood he said was from the previous night’s carnage off the floor of his shop. Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a close aide to Mr. Abbas, said Israel was planning another Defensive Shield because Mr. Netanyahu was facing increasing international isolation while the Palestinians were gaining international support. “They want more Palestinian blood,” Mr. Erekat told the official Voice of Palestine Radio, adding, “We will protect ourselves.”
The authorities say that Muhanad Halabi, 19, a law student at Al Quds University, stabbed to death two Israeli men Saturday night, wounded one of their wives and shot and injured the couple’s toddler with a gun wrested from his father, before being shot dead by Israeli police. The men, who had been headed to the Western Wall to pray, were buried Sunday in Jerusalem. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the P.L.O.’s executive committee, later said in a statement, “The Palestinian people, like all peoples of conscience and moral responsibility, condemns the use of violence against innocent civilians.” She added, however, that “Palestine, under Israel’s belligerent occupation, has been subject to the systematic and escalating violence of the occupation, whether in the form of settler-terrorism or at the hands of the Israeli military using live ammunition.”
Separately, Mr. Rosenfeld said police officers fatally shot a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya at 4 a.m. Sunday. News reports and neighbors identified the man as Fadi Alon, 21. In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu, leader of the conservative Likud party, faced criticism from opposition politicians in the center and on the left who excoriated him for having neglected the Palestinian issue, leading to years of stagnation and a diplomatic vacuum.
Video published on the Israeli news site Ynet showed the man running, with ultra-Orthodox Jews in pursuit, shouting “shoot him, shoot him” as the police arrived. He also came under stinging criticism from rightist members of his ruling coalition.
Mr. Rosenfeld said the man was fleeing after stabbing a 15-year-old Israeli who was walking down the street, injuring him, and had a knife in his hand when he was killed. Mohammad Dari, a resident of Issawiya, said Mr. Alon was walking home from work when Israelis screaming “Death to Arabs” chased him toward a police car. He said the officers exited the car and shot him. Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, primarily blamed Mr. Abbas for the violence but demanded steps from Mr. 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.
“Clashes are still going on and the situation here is very tense,” Mr. Dari said of Issawiya, a site of frequent tension and violence, adding that the police had blocked roads into the neighborhood. “We cannot even leave by foot. The area is under complete military closure. The residents of Issawiya have announced that today is a strike, no shops and no schools, and we are sitting at home waiting to see what will happen next.” Yossi Dagan, the leader of the Shomron settler council in the northern West Bank, held a vigil outside the prime minister’s official residence. He told reporters that Mr. Netanyahu was showing “too much fear” of the international community, which vehemently opposes settlement construction, and “too little concern for the responsibility of the state to its citizens.”
In Jenin, Montaser Abu Hajia, a resident of the refugee camp, said 29 Palestinians were injured early Sunday as Israeli soldiers stormed the home of a man involved with the militant Islamist group Hamas, arresting his brother and leaving the house in ashes. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, described the Jenin operation as “routine activity to arrest people involved in terrorism.” Professor Avineri, the political scientist, said the right-wing criticism was not aimed at bringing Mr. Netanyahu down, since he was the right’s best option, but at pushing him to build more settlement homes.
Colonel Lerner said the troops “believed there was an armed gunman barricading himself in” and that the building “caught fire,” noting that explosive devices were later found inside. He said residents of the camp hurled explosive devices at the soldiers, who responded with live ammunition. But that, Professor Avineri said, would exacerbate tensions with the international community, lead to an escalation on the Palestinian side and prove that Mr. Netanyahu was not sincere in his call to renew peace negotiations.
But Mr. Abu Hajia, a former president of the camp council, said the military struck the home “with a missile” and that it was “completely burnt down.” Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition holds the slimmest majority of one in the 120-seat Parliament and depends on the support of the Jewish Home. Some analysts suggested that he might use the escalation in tensions to seek to broaden his coalition by trying to bring in the center-left Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog.
Nahum Barnea, Israel’s leading columnist, wrote in Sunday’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper that the recent wave of violence is indeed “an intifada, the third intifada,” and that it was occurring “not because of the absence of political hope, but because of an absence of any hope.” “Netanyahu cannot continue with such a narrow coalition,” said Shmuel Sandler, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. If he does, Professor Sandler said, “He will really be in the hands of the right wing.”
“It is important to call it by its name because not doing so allows the political and military establishment to avoid, deny and escape from responsibility,” Mr. Barnea said. “If the past is any indication of the future, the day is not far off when it will spill into the cities of Israel and will morph from the terrorism of knives, stones and firebombs to suicide-bomber terrorism.”