Israeli army strengthens position in West Bank after synagogue attack

The Israeli army sent more troops into the occupied West Bank a day after a Palestinian gunman killed seven people on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and another shooting attack in the city on Saturday injured two people.

The attacks came at the end of a month of escalating clashes and follow an Israeli incursion into the West Bank that killed nine Palestinians, including seven men, and gunfire on the Israel-Gaza border.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet will meet on Saturday.

Friday’s attack outside a synagogue was the deadliest in the Jerusalem area since 2008. The gunman, Khaire Alkam, was a 21-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem. Among the dead is a 14-year-old boy, police said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the shooting and Alkam’s father told Reuters his son had no ties to militants. He attacked an area that Israel annexed to Jerusalem after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East war, in an internationally unrecognized move.

Police said he tried to flee by car, but was chased by officers and killed. Forty-two suspects, including his family members, have been arrested, police said.

On Saturday, police said a 13-year-old Palestinian boy opened fire on a group of pedestrians, wounding two people, before being shot and wounded by one of them. This incident took place in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood located under the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

The attacks highlight the potential for an escalation of violence after months of escalating clashes in the West Bank. At least 30 Palestinians – both militants and civilians – have been killed there since early 2023.

The attack by Israeli forces in Jenin on Thursday was the deadliest incident in years.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it was sending an additional battalion to the West Bank.

“The region is heading for an unprecedented escalation,” said Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Visiting a Jerusalem hospital to treat victims, far-right Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said he would try to increase the number of gun permits. “I want guns in the streets. I want Israeli citizens to be able to protect themselves,” he said.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the pro-settler Religious Zionist party, said he would call for the acceleration of plans to build Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which his party hopes will eventually be annexed.

Both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are members of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, but there was no indication that he would accede to their requests, some of which have been made in the past.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made no mention of the shootings in a statement published by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, and blamed Israel for the escalation of violence.

The Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, which has limited governing powers in the West Bank, suspended security cooperation agreements with Israel after the deadly Jenin attack.

The shooting on Friday, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, was condemned by the White House and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who called for “maximum restraint”. This came just days before a scheduled visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel and the West Bank.

Source: Terra

Rose

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