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Israel sets up East Jerusalem roadblocks in bid to stem attacks

14 October 2015 23:58 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Israel started setting up roadblocks in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and deploying soldiers across the country on Wednesday to combat a wave of Palestinian knife attacks, APA reports quoting Reuters.

In the latest incident, a Palestinian attempted to stab paramilitary police at an entrance to Jerusalem's walled Old City and was shot dead, an Israeli police spokeswoman said.

Palestinian officials condemned the security measures - the most serious clampdown in the Jerusalem area since a Palestinian uprising a decade ago - as collective punishment.

Israel's security cabinet had authorized the crackdown hours earlier in an overnight session after Palestinians armed with knives and a gun killed three Israelis and wounded several others on Tuesday.

Seven Israelis and 31 Palestinians, including assailants, children and protesters in violent anti-Israeli demonstrations, have been killed in two weeks of bloodshed.

The violence has been partly triggered by Palestinians' anger over what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, also revered by Jews as the site of two destroyed Jewish temples.

There is also deep-seated frustration with the failure of years of peace efforts to achieve Palestinian statehood and end Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israeli paramilitary border police used their vehicles to block an exit at the edge of Jabel Mukabar, an East Jerusalem neighborhood home to three Palestinians who carried out deadly attacks against Israelis on Tuesday.

Policemen carried out body searches and examined the identity papers of Palestinian motorists. Cars were then allowed to leave. Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem carry the same identity papers as Israelis and, unlike their brethren in the West Bank, can travel throughout Israel.

Dimitrii Delliani, an official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement, said closing entrances to Palestinian neighborhoods was "collective punishment in violation of all international law".

"(Israeli) cabinet decisions will not stop the Intifada (uprising). People of resistance do not fear new security restrictions," said Hussam Badrawn, a spokesman for the militant Hamas group in the West Bank.