Israel yesterday took the rare and drastic step of barring Palestinians from Jerusalem’s Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child.
The restrictions will be in place for two days, with only Israelis, tourists, residents of the area, business owners and students allowed, police said.
Worship at the sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound will be limited to men aged 50 and above. There will be no age restrictions on women, and worshippers will be allowed to enter through one specific gate.
Photo: AFP
The Palestinian government denounced “Israeli escalation” after the announcement of the ban, which Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan called unprecedented.
The usually bustling alleyways of the walled Old City were mostly quiet yesterday morning, with stores closed and hundreds of police guarding entrances.
Police fired stun grenades and rubber bullets to disperse protesters at one gate, a journalist reported.
About 300,000 Palestinians live in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, where the Old City is located.
The attacks late on Saturday and early yesterday came with Israeli security forces already on alert after recent clashes at the Al-Aqsa compound and surrounding Old City, as well as the murder in the West Bank of a Jewish settler couple in front of their young children.
A Palestinian said to be an Islamist militant killed two Israeli men and injured a woman and a toddler in a knife and gun attack in Jerusalem on Saturday, in a fresh escalation of violence.
A two-year-old child was slightly injured in the leg and taken to hospital as a result of Saturday’s attack, and a woman was in a serious condition, rescue services said.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said it appeared the child had been shot.
The attacker reportedly took a gun from one of the male victims and fired at police when they responded after being alerted, before he was himself shot dead.
Police named the attacker as Mohannad Shafiq Halani, 19, from a village near Ramallah in the West Bank.
Militant group Islamic Jihad said he was one of its members, but did not claim responsibility for the attack.
Media reports said three of the victims were members of the same Orthodox family on their way to pray at the Western Wall.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said his country was fighting “a battle against terrorism” and vowed to go after “the killers of innocent people.”
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “losing control of Israel’s security.”
The US condemned the attack, with Department of State spokesman John Kirby saying Washington was “very concerned about mounting tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
Palestinian militant group Hamas praised the attack as “a heroic act of resistance.”
In a separate incident on Saturday, a Palestinian man stabbed a passerby in west Jerusalem before being shot dead by police while he was fleeing the scene.
Israeli security forces have been on high alert over recent Jewish and Muslim holidays, particularly with Jews visiting the sensitive al-Aqsa compound, which they call the Temple Mount.
Thursday night’s murder of a Jewish settler couple in the West Bank in front of their four children further boosted tensions.
Apprehensive of the potential for violence between settlers and Palestinians, the army said after the murder of the couple it was deploying “four battalions in order to prevent an escalation of violence in the area adjacent to the location of the attack.”
Palestinian police and medical sources said 10 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire in the West Bank earlier on Saturday during a raid by troops hunting the couple’s murderers.
Palestinians protesting against the raid in the territory’s main northern city of Nablus hurled stones at soldiers, who responded with rubber bullets, tear gas and live ammunition, the sources said.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that arrests had been made, without providing details.
Thursday night’s murders came just hours after Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly in New York, where he called for a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas adressed the UN a day earlier.
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