A new attack in Jerusalem raises tension as Israel reinforces its troops in the West Bank

The escalation of tension in Israel and Palestine does not let up.

Less than 24 hours after a Palestinian killed seven people in the deadliest attack since 2011, two more Israelis have been wounded - one seriously - in a new gun attack in Jerusalem.

The attacker, just 13 years old, was killed by two civilians with a weapons license.

Israel has reinforced its military deployment in the West Bank with a battalion, territory it has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War, while the Jerusalem district police have increased their alert to the maximum and arrested 42 people since Friday's attack.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has promised a "strong, fast and precise" response and his Security Cabinet has approved making it easier for thousands of civilians to obtain weapons permits, walling up the house of the perpetrator of the attack until it is demolished, "reinforcing settlements" in occupied territory and withdraw social security "to families of terrorists who support terrorism."

The new attack took place this Saturday morning in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood at the foot of the old city.

In the videos broadcast on social networks, several shots are heard and two religious Jews with bloody clothes are seen on the ground, separately.

They are a father and his son, aged 47 and 23, and suffer "shot wounds to the upper part of their body", the emergency services have reported.

The second is in serious condition.

Security personnel after the attack in the Silwán neighborhood, this Saturday.

AMMAR AWAD (REUTERS)

In both attacks, the police have identified the perpetrators as residents of East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part occupied by Israel, which has already raised the alert in the city to the highest level, with 12-hour shifts for officers, and asked the population that “report any suspicious person or object”.

A squad of the anti-terror unit will also be permanently stationed in the Jerusalem area "to respond quickly to exceptional situations, when necessary."

The police chief, Kobi Shabtai, has also asked civilians "who have a weapons license and are trained to use them to carry them when necessary."

"Over the years, more than once, civilians with licensed weapons competency have neutralized terrorists and prevented more serious attacks when they were near the scene of an attack," he said in a statement.

Most of the 42 arrests after the attack occurred after patrolling the attacker's home in Al Tur, a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem located about 10 kilometers from the Neve Yaakov synagogue, the Jewish settlement near Jerusalem in front of which he opened fire. with a gun.

A part of the detainees are relatives and close friends of the attacker and another, residents of the neighborhood.

Police want to "examine thoroughly the connection between each of the arrested suspects and the terrorist who carried out the attack, as well as the extent of their knowledge and/or involvement."

The author was 21 years old and arrived at the scene of the attack by car.

A police chase led to a shooting in which he lost his life.

Entrance to the house of the author of the attack on Friday, this Saturday in Al Tur, in East Jerusalem. AMMAR AWAD (REUTERS)

In a statement released by the official Wafa agency, the Palestinian Authority has blamed "fully the Israeli occupation government for the dangerous escalation that the situation has reached."

With 30 Palestinian and seven Israeli corpses in less than a month, 2023 is on track to double the balance of 2022, which was already the bloodiest in years.

Two incidents reveal the atmosphere of tension.

In the afternoon, a Palestinian truck driver swerved off the road towards a group of settlers gathered at a road junction.

An Israeli soldier interpreted this as an attempt to run over them and opened fire on him.

According to the preliminary investigation of the army, the movement of the driver was fortuitous.

Shortly after, in the settlement where the attack took place on Friday, a group of Israelis broke down the gates that protected a team of journalists from channel 13 of the national television, threw their chairs to the ground and threatened them while shouting: "¡ Leftists, go home!

The attack on Friday is unusual.

The death toll – unprecedented since a cell slipped into Israel from the Egyptian Sinai peninsula and killed eight people near the city of Eilat in 2011 – resembles those of the years of the Second Intifada (2000-2005). .

It was the bloodiest point of a day in which Israel had bombarded Gaza and Palestinian militiamen had launched seven rockets, in both cases without causing casualties, in a first fight following the Israeli incursion that triggered the current escalation of violence the day before. .

With nine dead in the Jenin refugee camp, it is one of the deadliest in recent years.

During the day, the Israeli authorities have begun to make public the identities of several fatalities of the attack in Neve Yaakov.

Two were a married couple, 48 and 45 years old, who went out to help the wounded;

two others were 56 and 68;

and the youngest, 14. Among the deceased is a woman of Ukrainian nationality, the country's president, Volodimir Zelensky, reported in kyiv.

The tour of the Middle East that the Secretary of State of the United States, Antony Blinken, had planned for weeks now takes another turn.

Blinken plans to land this Sunday in Egypt and spend Monday and Tuesday between Israel and Palestine.

In the new context, he will address during his visit the "measures to be taken to de-escalate tensions," said the vice spokesman for the State Department, Vedant Patel, on Friday.

The protest against the Government, marked by mourning

Minute of silence for the attack on Neve Yaakov, this Saturday at the start of the demonstration in Tel Aviv. Corinna Kern (REUTERS)

The attacks have stopped the wave of protests against the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who took office a month ago.

They are convened by civil society organizations and supported by the main opposition forces.

The demonstrations, denouncing the impact on the rule of law of initiatives such as a controversial judicial reform, began in Tel Aviv and have been growing.

On the 14th they already gathered 80,000 people and last week, 130,000, still with Tel Aviv as the epicenter, but already with some 20,000 in other cities such as Haifa or Jerusalem.

This Saturday, with the blood of the two attacks still hot a few tens of kilometers away, the attendance has fallen to around 60,000 and they take place in a somber tone.

The protest in Tel Aviv, in fact, began with a minute of silence and this time it is not accompanied by music.

This is a common dynamic among the country's Jewish majority (80% of the population): in the face of a Palestinian attack, internal differences -political or identity- fade into the background and society coalesces around the feeling that it is facing a common enemy and it is not the best moment to criticize the Government.

"These terrible terrorist attacks remind us of a simple and painful truth: whatever our disagreements, we must maintain unity against our enemies, who want to harm us and take up arms to kill us," the country's president, Isaac Herzog, said before the protest. it's a statement.

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