Jerusalem: Palestinians carried out three stabbings Monday in Jerusalem, leaving a teenage Israeli boy in critical condition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily accused the country’s Arab leaders of helping incite weeks of violence. Two of the attackers, both teenage boys, were killed.
In a fiery speech at parliament, Netanyahu accused Arab parties of “undermining” the country. He called on Israel’s Arab citizens to “kick out the extremists among you.”
Netanyahu spoke on another bloody day, the latest in a monthlong wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence. In a new setback for efforts to restore calm, a Palestinian official said a delegation of Mideast peace envoys had called off a trip to the region.
Israeli police reported three separate stabbings across the city, including an assault by two attackers in the east Jerusalem area of Pisgat Zeev. Police said the pair seriously wounded a 20-year-old man before attacking a teenage boy on a bicycle.
The boy was critically wounded before police shot and killed one of the attackers, while the second was run over by a car.
Abdel Nasser Manasra, a relative of Ahmed, 13, and Hassan, 15, said both were cousins. He did not know which had been killed.
Other attacks occurred in Jerusalem’s Old City, where a 17-year-old assailant was killed, and outside the national police headquarters. The attacker, identified as a 16-year-old girl, was shot and wounded, while a police officer was lightly hurt.
The unrest began last month with clashes at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site and quickly spread across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Five Israelis have been killed in stabbings, a shooting and a stoning attack on a moving vehicle, while at least 25 Palestinians, including 10 attackers, have been slain.
Several Palestinian children, including a 2-year-old girl killed with her mother in a Gaza airstrike, have been among the dead. Hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded in clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank.
The stabbings have rattled Israel. The attackers, many of them teenagers, have had no affiliation with militant groups, and the seemingly random nature of the stabbings has made it difficult to predict or prevent them.
Netanyahu has come under heavy criticism for failing to stop the violence, and an opinion poll this week showed that more than 70 percent of the public is dissatisfied with his handling of the crisis.