Even with the intensified security, at least two assaults were reported Wednesday.
In the late afternoon, Israeli forces fatally shot a Palestinian teenager who a police spokeswoman said had rushed toward them with a knife at the Damascus Gate of the Old City. Several Palestinian witnesses said they had seen the teenager, who was wearing military-style fatigues, have an argument with his father and run toward the gate, but that he had not attacked anyone.
A few hours later, an attacker stabbed and wounded a woman about 70 years old as she was about to board a bus near the central bus station in West Jerusalem, according to the police. A police officer saw the assailant with a knife and shot him, the police said. It was not immediately clear if he was killed.
Seven Israeli Jews have been killed this month by Palestinian assailants, including three on Tuesday in Jerusalem: two in an attack on a bus at the juncture of Jewish and Arab areas, and one pedestrian in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood who was rammed by a vehicle and then hit with a meat cleaver.
An estimated 30 Palestinians have died in the violence, most of it centered in Jerusalem.
Palestinians have called the new security measures by the Israeli authorities a disproportionate response of collective punishment that will only worsen the tensions.
“East Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine,†Saeb Erekat, chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, said.
