Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called an emergency meeting of top security officials and ministers after four attacks by Palestinians left three Israelis dead. It is the most intense eruption so far in two weeks of escalating violence that has alarmed Israel.
The Israeli authorities said two assailants boarded a public bus in Jerusalem and shot and stabbed riders, killing two men. The third Israeli fatality occurred in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem, when a Palestinian worker for the Israeli telephone company rammed the company’s car into pedestrians, then got out and attacked them with a meat cleaver.
There were also two stabbings in Ra’anana, a city of 80,000 that is home to many American immigrant families. Police officers killed one of the bus attackers and wounded the other, while a security guard fatally shot the phone company worker.
“It started with knives, then cars and now guns,†said Aliza Ben Zichri, a retired kindergarten teacher who was one of the many who rushed to the scene of the bus attack after hearing “Why not put them under curfew?â€, reports New York Times.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called an emergency meeting of top security officials and ministers for Tuesday afternoon. A police spokeswoman said the steps to be considered included a complete closing of Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, whose residents are generally not citizens of Israel but can freely travel throughout the country and often work in Jewish areas, and an easing of gun-licensing procedures.
At the scene of the bus attack, Mayor Nir Barkat of Jerusalem called for new restrictions on Arab neighborhoods in the city.
“We have to stop and place a curfew,†he said. “We must widen and upgrade the steps taken up until now.â€
