Israeli security forces shot dead two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, police and the army said, as a month-long spate of attacks showed no signs of abating.
The latest assaults, like other recent stabbings, took place in the West Bank city of Hebron, signalling that violence was shifting to the West Bank from Israel and Jerusalem, where police have set up roadblocks in Palestinian neighbourhoods that were home to many of the alleged assailants.
Religious, political tensions
The wave of violence, the worst since the 2014 Gaza war, has in part been spurred by religious and political tensions over a Jerusalem site sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
Increased visitor numbers by religious Jews to Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque plaza — Islam’s holiest site outside Saudi Arabia and revered in Judaism as the location of two destroyed biblical temples — have spurred Palestinian allegations that Israel is violating a “status quo” by which Jewish prayer there is banned.
Israel has pledged to abide by the long-standing arrangement at the site in Jerusalem’s walled Old City.
Stabbing near religious site
A paramilitary policeman shot dead a Palestinian in Hebron who had stabbed and lightly wounded a soldier, police said. Hours later, at a nearby location, a second Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli troops when he tried to knife a soldier, who was unhurt, the army said.
Since the latest wave began on October 1, at least 61 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israelis in the West Bank and in Gaza. Of those, 34 were assailants armed mainly with knives and in some cases with guns, Israel said. Many were teenagers.
11 such killings
Eleven Israelis have been killed in stabbings and shootings.
Amnesty International says some of the killings of the Palestinians were unjustified and that Israeli forces were using “extreme and unlawful measures.” Israel says it has a right to use lethal force to stop attempts to kill its citizens.
A U.S.-promoted Jordanian plan announced on Saturday to set up cameras to monitor the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound has not been implemented. Palestinians have voiced concern that Israel would use such footage to arrest suspected militants.
Talks have ended in fiasco
Palestinians are also frustrated by the failure of numerous rounds of peace talks to secure them an independent state in territories, including the West Bank, that Israel captured in a 1967 war. The last phase of negotiations collapsed in 2014.
