Two attacks were carried out by two Palestinians in the Israeli city of Jerusalem on Friday night and Saturday morning, killing seven and injuring several. The violence comes against the backdrop of a sharp escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Thursday, following the death of nine Palestinians during an Israeli army raid on Jenin, in the north of the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces went on high alert as calls for restraint from abroad grew.
Seven people dead Friday night
On Friday night, a Palestinian gunman shot and killed seven people near a synagogue in East Jerusalem during Shabbat prayers. This shooting occurred in Neve Yaakov, a Jewish settlement neighborhood in East Jerusalem, part of the Holy City annexed by Israel. The attack took place on the night of World Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The shooter is a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, who opened fire in the street at around 8:15 p.m. (7:15 p.m. French time), according to police. “I saw the terrorist arrive by car. He stopped in the middle of the crossing, opened fire from his car” and continued shooting at people who were approaching to help those affected, said Shalom Borohov, a 48-year-old hairdresser who lives near the synagogue, he told AFP.
The man was shot. According to police, “the terrorist was neutralized and pronounced dead” after a car chase and a shootout with police. According to the Israeli and Palestinian media, his name is Khayri Alqam.
It is “one of the worst attacks we have suffered in recent years,” Israeli police chief Kobi Shabtai told reporters at the scene. Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said it had identified a total of 10 bullet victims, including a 70-year-old man and a 14-year-old teenager.
Police in the following hours “arrested 42 suspects for questioning, some are members of the terrorist’s family,” police said in a statement. Other of the arrested suspects live in his neighborhood in East Jerusalem, he added. In a separate statement, the police said that the Israeli forces had been placed on “high alert”.
This attack has not yet been claimed.
Another attack perpetrated by a 13-year-old boy
On Saturday there was another attack in this Israeli city. A father and son were shot and wounded in a new offensive in East Jerusalem. The attack took place near the City of David archaeological site in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem, the eastern part occupied and annexed by Israel, Israeli police said.
The two injured are a 23-year-old man and a 47-year-old man hit “by bullets to the upper part of the body,” according to Magen David Adom.
A 13-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem fired the gun. He was “incapacitated and injured” by passers-by holding a license to carry weapons, Israeli police said.
This attack has also not been claimed.
Renewed violence in this territory
The attacks on Friday and Saturday are part of an outbreak of violence between Israel and Palestine.
An Israeli raid on Thursday in Jenin, a city in the northern occupied West Bank, had already raised fears of renewed violence this week. Nine Palestinians were killed in this raid and several people were injured. The Israeli army said it carried out an “anti-terrorism operation” there against members of the Islamic Jihad organization who Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said were planning an attack in Israel.
A tenth Palestinian was killed on Thursday by Israeli fire in Al-Ram, near Ramallah, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In retaliation, rockets were fired overnight from Thursday to Friday into Israel from the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory under Hamas control since 2007.
Israel responded overnight with airstrikes against what the army described as Hamas’s “clandestine rocket factory” in Gaza. No casualties were recorded in this exchange of missiles.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that he was “deeply concerned by the ongoing escalation of violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.” “It is time to exercise the utmost restraint,” he insisted in a statement, calling Friday’s attack “particularly despicable” on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
But the situation is far from calming down on the spot: news of the attack on Friday was followed by scenes of jubilation in Ramallah and across the Gaza Strip by residents waving Palestinian flags, according to AFP journalists. While at the scene of the shooting, dozens of Israelis greeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with chants of “Death to the Arabs!”
The attack on Jerusalem “is a natural reaction to the crimes of the (Israeli) occupation against our Palestinian people,” Hazem Qassem, spokesman for the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, said in Gaza, recalling the death of nine Palestinians in Jenin.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a “strong” and “swift” Israeli response on Saturday night. “We are not looking for an escalation, but we are ready for any scenario,” he said.
International call for calm
From Washington to Moscow, many foreign leaders expressed their horror Saturday after the two successive attacks on East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority refrained from condemning, holding that Israel was “fully responsible for the dangerous escalation.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to visit Jerusalem and Ramallah earlier this week to call for de-escalation. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, asked Israel this Saturday to use lethal force only as a “last resort” while denouncing the “terrifying terrorist attack” perpetrated on Friday.
The attack was condemned by the US president, who asked the Israeli prime minister to assure him of “America’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s security.” Russian diplomacy also said on Saturday that it was “deeply concerned” and called on all parties for “maximum restraint.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “deeply upset” on Saturday. “Attacking synagogue worshipers on Holocaust Remembrance Day and Shabbat is appalling,” UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted late Friday. “We support our Israeli friends,” he added.
“Strong condemnation of this heinous act. The spiral of violence must be avoided at all costs.” French President Emmanuel Macron also wrote, Saturday on Twitter. “In a context of growing tensions, we call on all parties to avoid actions that could fuel the spiral of violence,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Source: BFM TV
