JERUSALEM // The Israeli army said on Friday that it was temporarily barring Palestinians from entering Israel, stepping up already tough restrictions announced after Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis in Tel Aviv.
An army spokeswoman said that crossings to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be closed for Palestinians in all but “medical and humanitarian cases”.
She said that the closure would remain in force until midnight on Sunday.
A spokeswoman for Cogat, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, said that about 10,000 Palestinians were allowed into Jerusalem for prayers on the first Friday of Ramadan at the Al Aqsa mosque complex.
The worshippers would have to return home after prayers, the spokeswoman said.
Passage was unrestricted for Palestinian women, but there were age restrictions for men.
The age limit was not clear, but guards told Palestinians that admission for males was restricted to those over 45 years of age, while other officials said the threshold was either 35 or 30.
The United Nations rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he was “deeply concerned” by Israel’s response to the Tel Aviv attack.
The Israeli reaction “includes measures that may amount to prohibited collective punishment and will only increase the sense of injustice and frustration felt by Palestinians in this very tense time”, his office said on Friday.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet on Thursday and announced measures against Palestinians in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting in a Tel Aviv nightspot, the deadliest attack in a months-long wave of violence.
Among the measures, the government said it was revoking entry permits for more than 80,000 Palestinians to visit relatives in Israel during Ramadan.
It also revoked work permits for 204 of the attackers’ relatives and the army blockaded their West Bank hometown of Yatta, with soldiers patrolling and stopping cars as they entered and exited.
The government also said it was sending two additional battalions – amounting to hundreds more troops – into the occupied West Bank.
Newly appointed defence minister Avigdor Lieberman ordered that the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks would no longer be returned to their families for burial, a spokesman said.
The policy was backed by Israeli hawks as a deterrent measure.
Israel last closed its crossings for two days in May during its remembrance day and independence day commemorations.
A closure is often imposed over Jewish holidays, when large numbers of Israelis congregate to pray or celebrate, presenting a potential target for Palestinian attacks.
The start of April’s Passover festival involved this type of shutdown.
The closure announced on Friday came as Israeli security forces deployed in Jerusalem, prepared for thousands of Muslim worshippers at Al
Aqsa.
“Thousands of police will be in and around the Old City of Jerusalem carrying out security measures,” the police said.
Public security minister Gilad Erdan said the police were there to safeguard both Muslim and Jewish prayer at the city’s holy sites over the weekend, when the Jewish festival of Shavuot begins on Saturday.
Violence since October has killed at least 207 Palestinians, 32 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese. Most of the Palestinians were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities. Others were killed in clashes with security forces or by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.
The violence had declined in recent weeks before Wednesday’s shooting.
* Agence France-Presse
