JERUSALEM: Israel set up checkpoints on Wednes­day in Palestinian neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem and mobilised hundreds of soldiers as it struggled to stop attacks that have raised fears of a full-scale uprising.

Hours after the first roadblocks were erected, police said another attacker attempted to stab a security guard at an entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City but was shot dead before harming anyone.

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Police described the man as a “member of a minority” — the term used for an Arab — without saying if he was a Palestinian or an Israeli citizen.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under immense pressure to halt the violence and frustrated Palestinian youths defying attempts to restore calm, police said 300 Israeli soldiers were joining their patrols.

Netanyahu’s government also announced further drastic measures, including easing firearms laws for Israelis and stripping alleged attackers from east Jerusalem of their residency permits.

A wave of mainly stabbing attacks by Palestinians has spread fear in Israel, while a gun-and-knife attack on a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday killed two people and led to outrage among Israelis.

A third Israeli was killed in Jerusalem on Tuesday when a Palestinian attacker rammed his car into pedestrians then exited with a knife, making it the city’s bloodiest day in the current wave of unrest.

All three attackers in the two incidents were from east Jerusalem, and two were shot dead.

The move to install checkpoints followed a decision by Netanyahu’s security cabinet overnight authorising police to seal off or impose a curfew on parts of Jerusalem.

The upsurge in violence that began on October 1 has led some to warn of the risk of a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Seven Israelis have been killed and dozens wounded in the attacks.

Thirty Palestinians have died, including alleged attackers, some of them teenagers. Hundreds have been wounded in clashes with Israeli security forces.

While the stabbings and gun attack have led to anger and fear among Israelis, video footage shared online of security forces shooting dead alleged attackers has fed Palestinian anger, with protesters seeing some of the killings as unjustified.

On Wednesday, video purported to be of the attacker being shot while on the ground spread on the Internet.

At the funeral for 28-year-old Moataz Zawahra, killed the previous day in clashes in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, youths with their faces covered in red keffiyeh head scarves carried his body and called him a martyr.

“He was on the front line close to the soldiers and he threw firebombs,” his mother Diya said. “We are only at the beginning of the journey. As long as the occupation exists, there will be martyrs, prisoners and wounded. “Clashes erupted after the funeral, with youths throwing stones and firebombs and Israeli security forces responding with tear gas and rubber bullets — a daily occurrence in parts of the occupied West Bank over the past two weeks.

The number and extent of checkpoints in east Jerusalem were not yet clear and appeared limited on Wednesday.

In the neighbourhood of Jabel Mukaber, where Tuesday’s attackers lived, an AFP journalist saw four armed police checking cars leaving the area.

“This is normal for us,” one Palestinian man in his mid-20s said with a wry smile after being stopped for about five minutes while officers searched his car and checked his ID.

Such checkpoints were used during past spikes in violence, much to the anger of Palestinian residents who consider it collective punishment.

Meanwhile on the same bus route hit by Tuesday’s attack, a Jewish man who looked to be in his 20s and who declined to give his name displayed a container of pepper spray in his pocket.

“I’m very worried,” the commuter said as he travelled near the scene of the attack.

The rising tide of violence, which has seen more than 20 stabbing attacks in addition to protests, has raised fears of a third intifada.

In the intifadas of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, hundreds of people were killed in near daily Israel-Palestinian violence.

The unrest has led to international calls for calm, while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel to carry out a review of whether its security forces were resorting to excessive force.

The violence began on October 1, when a suspected cell of Hamas shot dead a Jewish settler couple in the West Bank in front of their children.

Those killings followed repeated clashes at east Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al Aqsa mosque compound in September between Israeli forces and Palestinian youths.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2015

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