JERUSALEM // Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border fence on Friday, killing six of them, while an Israeli man stabbed four Palestinians in southern Israel and violence flared again in Jerusalem as the two sides braced for a protracted confrontation.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya termed the unrest an all out uprising or intifada and pledged the support of Gazans to Palestinians in Jerusalem to defend Islam’s third holiest site, Al Aqsa mosque, from the perceived Israeli threat.
In the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s old city, tensions were high as Palestinian residents chafed at Israeli restrictions on who could enter the mosque. They voiced fears that they would become the targets of reprisal attacks for the killing of two Israelis – including a settler rabbi, Nehemia Lavi – in Jerusalem’s Old City last Saturday, and for a subsequent spate of stabbings.
Six Palestinians were killed and scores wounded by Israeli fire near Gaza’s border fence.
Ahmed Al Hirbawi, Shadi Dawla, Abed Al Wahidi and Nabil Sharaf, all aged 20, were killed when soldiers on the Israeli side of the border fired on youths throwing stones at them from east of Khan Younis in Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
Mohammed Al Raqab, 15, and Adnan Abu Alian, 20, were killed in similar clashes east of Gaza City.
Medics said another 80 Palestinians were wounded, 10 of them seriously.
An army spokeswoman said about 200 Palestinians had approached the fence while hurling rocks and rolling burning tyres toward security forces.
“Forces on the site responded with fire toward the main instigators to prevent their progress and disperse the riot,” she said.
The spokeswoman confirmed “eleven hits” without elaborating.
Israel imposes what it calls a security zone running about 300 metres from the border into the territory of the Strip.
The fatalities raised the possibility that Hamas or other groups would retaliate with rocket fire from the Strip into Israel, creating a second front of the confrontation which has thus far rocked Jerusalem and the West Bank, where over 900 Palestinians have been wounded in clashes with Israeli troops.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, speaking before the fatalities along the Israel-Gaza border, said: “This is Friday, the day of rage. It is a day that will represent the start of a new intifada in all the land of Palestine.”
He described those carrying out stabbings of Israelis as “heroes”.
Also on Friday, in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, a Jewish man stabbed and wounded four Palestinians, two of them seriously. The attack was seen as revenge for the wounding of seven Israelis by Palestinians in four attacks on Thursday. That same day, Israeli troops shoot dead a Palestinian youth after entering the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem to conduct searches.
Meanwhile, an Israeli teenager was lightly injured when he was stabbed in West Jerusalem by a Palestinian on Friday. And in the northern town of Afula, police said security forces shot a Palestinian woman after she brandished a knife and attempted to stab a security guard.
The immediate cause of much of the violence is the Palestinian perception that Israel is trying to impose Jewish prayer at Al Aqsa, which is on a site that Jews revere as Temple Mount. Israel denies this, however, and accuses Palestinian leaders of “inciting” the violence.
In the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, there was bitterness that Israel had restricted access to Friday prayers to men aged fifty and over, something police say is a security measure.
“They have no right to permit us or not permit us, the mosque is for Muslims,” said an elementary schoolteacher who identified himself only as Abu Ashraf,
Hemda El Hai, an Israeli education student, said that she and other young settlers had taken over a large swath of the Muslim quarter street on which the rabbi, Lavi, was killed last Saturday “to reinforce the Jewish presence”. The group has set up a protest tent in the street, under the protection of Israeli police.
“The people in the stores all around here are partners to the murders,” Ms El Hai alleged. “These people not only should have their stores closed, they should sit in jail.”
She cited a woman wounded in the same stabbing attack who said that Arab bystanders had slapped her and laughed at her while the knife was still in her body,
Behind where Ms El Hai stood was a sign with the name of Lavi and the other killed man, Aharon Banita, with the following words underlined three times: “May God avenge their blood.”
Another sign, apparently written by settlers, proclaimed: “Here Stood Accomplices to Murder.”
“That’s why I’m afraid, said Palestinian pastry shop owner Mahmoud Sbeih, pointing to the sign. “They think this whole street is responsible.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse
