A Palestinian teenager on Saturday shot and wounded a father and son near an archaeological site popular for Jews in a fresh attack in East Jerusalem, Israeli police say, a day after seven people were shot dead by another Palestinian near a synagogue.
The violence comes against the backdrop of a sharp escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Thursday, after the death of nine Palestinians, including fighters and a woman in her 60s, in an Israeli army raid in the Jenin refugee camp, in the north of the occupied West Bank.
For 48 hours, calls to ease tensions have multiplied abroad, and the American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is expected for a visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah at the beginning of the week.
“I am thinking of the victims of yesterday’s attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem, their families, and the Israeli people. Firm condemnation of this heinous act. The cycle of violence must be avoided at all costs,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on Twitter on Saturday.
According to Israeli police, Saturday’s attack was carried out around 10:45 a.m. (3:45 a.m. EST) near the City of David archaeological site in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, and the teenager , from the part of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel, was “neutralized and injured” by passers-by who held a license to carry weapons.
According to Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, the two victims of the attack are a 23-year-old man and a 47-year-old man with “gunshot wounds in the upper body”.
Earlier, Israeli police announced the arrest of 42 suspects in connection with the attack the day before near a synagogue in Neve Yaakov, a Jewish settlement neighborhood in East Jerusalem, at the time of the prayer of the shabbat.
This attack, one of the bloodiest in Jerusalem for years, was condemned by the UN, the United States, France, Turkey, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
“Highest Alert”
The assailant, a 21-year-old Palestinian man living in East Jerusalem, was shot after a car chase and a shootout with officers, police said.
From the same source, some of the suspects arrested for questioning “are part of the terrorist’s family”, others live in his neighborhood, and the Israeli forces have been placed on “high alert”.
After Friday night’s attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised ‘immediate action’ and called on Israelis not to take justice into their own hands but to rely on the military and police .
The news of the attack was followed by scenes of jubilation in Ramallah and the Gaza Strip by residents waving Palestinian flags, according to journalists from Agence France-Presse.
On Saturday, the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah hailed in a press release a “heroic” operation.
“It is particularly despicable that this attack occurred on a place of worship,” said the spokesperson for Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations.
“Dangerous Climb”
US President Joe Biden has blasted an “atrocious terrorist attack”, according to a statement from the White House.
State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said that during his trip to the Middle East, Mr. Blinken would discuss “steps to be taken for a de-escalation of tensions.”
The shooting of Neve Yaakov came the day after an Israeli army raid in Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank, which claimed the lives of nine Palestinians.
Israel presented this operation as a preventive action against a cell of the armed group Islamic Jihad which planned an attack in Israel.
In retaliation, rockets were fired overnight from Thursday to Friday towards Israel from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian territory under the control of the Islamist movement Hamas since 2007.
Israel responded with airstrikes against what the army described as Hamas’ “underground rocket factory” in Gaza. No casualties have been identified.
Jordan, a neighboring Arab country that has signed a peace treaty with Israel, condemned the attack on Friday evening, calling on Saturday to take “urgent measures to stop the dangerous escalation”.