By, Anshel Pfeffer
3 min read
ByAnshel Pfeffer, Anshel Pfeffer
Israel and the West Bank were on a knife edge this week as both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were hit by terror attacks and Palestinian leaders raised the spectre of a third intifada.
Security forces struggled to restore calm as violent demonstrations spread throughout the West Bank and threatened to erupt among Arabs living within the Green Line.
Monday saw two terror attacks on Israelis in what is widely acknowledged as the worst round of violence since the end of the Second Intifada in 2004.
In the first attack, Sgt Almog Shiloni was stabbed to death outside a train station in Tel Aviv.
Later in the day, 26-year-old Dalia Lemkus was murdered by a Palestinian driver at the Gush Etzion Junction south of Jerusalem. The terrorist had tried to run over a group of people waiting at a bus stop before leaving his van and attacking them with a knife.
Netanyahu accused Abbas of 'wild incitement'
In both cases, the assailants were caught after being shot and injured.
In a letter smuggled out of prison on Tuesday, Marwan Barghouti - one of the most popular Palestinian leaders - called on his followers to end any co-operation with Israel, choose "global and armed resistance" and remain "faithful to Arafat's legacy, to his ideas, and his principles for which tens of thousands martyrs died".
Meanwhile, in a speech in Ramallah to commemorate ten years since the death of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Jewish settlers were risking a "global religious war" by attempting to pray on Temple Mount.
Monday's murders signalled that the violent unrest around Temple Mount and East Jerusalem has now spread within the Green Line.
The killing in Gush Etzion took place almost exactly five months after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped at the same spot and subsequently murdered, opening a cycle of violence that has yet to abate.
The death of an Israeli-Arab on Saturday morning at the hands of police threatened to ignite violence among Palestinians living inside the Green Line.
On early Saturday morning, in the northern village of Kafr Kanna, 22-year-old Khayr al-Din Hamdan tried to attack police sitting in a vehicle. He was shot dead by one of the officers as he turned to run away. The controversial circumstances of his death, captured on video, led to widespread protests in a number of Israeli-Arab towns and an internal police investigation into the shooting.
Early on Wednesday morning, unknown arsonists torched a mosque in the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir, near Ramallah.
The Palestinians accused settlers of carrying out the attack. At around the same time, a firebomb was thrown at the ancient synagogue in the Israeli-Arab city of Shfaram, near Haifa.
The violence has led to an escalation in the war of words between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of "fanning the flames" of violence.
Mr Netanyahu denied Palestinian claims that Israel was trying to change the status quo on Temple Mount and said that "instead of educating his people towards peace, Abu Mazen (Abbas) is educating them for terror attacks".
He was responding to what he called "wild incitement" by Mr Abbas in his Ramallah speech.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials accused the Palestinian Authority this week of continuing to encourage riots in Jerusalem while ensuring calm in the areas under their control.
In an attempt to restore calm, the commander of the IDF's Central Command, Major General Nitzan Alon, met a group of Palestinian security chiefs on Tuesday to discuss the situation.
General Alon ensured his Palestinian counterparts that Israel would continue to enforce the status quo on Temple Mount, where Jews are allowed to enter only under police supervision and are not allowed to pray.
Military officials have emphasised that despite the tension between the politicians, security co-operation with the Palestinians has continued as normal.
They have said that it is impossible to assess whether the current round of violence will continue. They pointed out that the great majority of the attacks so far have been carried out by individuals operating on their own initiative.
Despite his fiery speech, Mr Abbas was expected to have promised US Secretary of State John Kerry that he would act to restore calm in a meeting on Thursday in Amman.
Mr Abbas is not thought to be interested in a major escalation of violence, as next month he plans to ask the United Nations Security Council to vote on his plan to set a date for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
While Israel has yet to formulate a policy to respond to this Palestinian challenge, the view in Jerusalem is that it remains in Mr Abbas's interests to maintain a certain level of calm in the West Bank.