Stabbing attacks shake Israel as tensions rise

An Israeli woman was killed and two others injured in a stabbing attack at a bus stop in a West Bank settlement on Monday. The incident occurred just hours after an Israeli soldier was knifed near a train station in Tel Aviv and later died of his injuries. The stabbings are the latest in a wave of Palestinian attacks on Israeli mass transit infrastructure following anger over Israel’s summer war in Gaza, Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and Muslim fears of Jewish encroachment on holy sites.

The 25-year-old woman and two others were stabbed at Alon Shvut junction in Gush Etzion, one of the first settlements established by Israel in Palestinian territory after it occupied the West Bank in 1967. A security guard shot the suspect, allegedly a Palestinian man, at the entrance of the settlement, Ha’aretz reported.

Earlier Monday, an Israeli soldier was critically wounded in a stabbing attack near Haganah train station in Tel Aviv, and succumbed to his wounds at a hospital later in the day. The suspect, a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Nablus, was arrested.

In October, a 21-year-old Palestinian from the village of Silwan, located on the outskirts of East Jerusalem, crashed his car into a crowd of Israelis at a light-rail stop killing two people. Days earlier, an Israeli settler rammed his car into two Palestinian children near Ramallah, killing a kindergartner on her way home from school.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in parliament after Monday’s attack in Tel Aviv, said, "Terror ... is being directed at all parts of the country for a simple reason: The terrorists, the inciters, want to drive us from everywhere."

Palestinians, however, say the violence is the result of mounting frustration over years of Israeli human rights abuses and failed peace negotiations.

"What we’re seeing today is less about a spark than it is about the kindling that’s been laid for years and years," said Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C.

"Given the lack of prospect for Palestinian rights in the future, lack of any sort of diplomacy to deal seriously with the issue and, of course, continued provocation by Israelis in Jerusalem, and most specially around the holy sites in Jerusalem, [Israelis] are really playing with fire."

Contrary to international law, Israel continues to build settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel’s refusal to halt their construction and expansion has at times arrested the peace process and increased resentment and distrust among Palestinians.

Tensions in Jerusalem have risen in recent weeks, in part by Muslim fears of Jewish encroachment at the sacred site where the Al-Aqsa mosque stands, a hilltop plateau known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Israeli-American Yehuda Glick, who leads a movement to rebuild a Jewish temple in place of the mosque, was shot and injured on Oct. 29 in Jerusalem, purportedly by a Palestinian who was later killed by Israeli police.

The fatal shooting of another Palestinian by a policeman on Saturday in the Israeli town of Kfar Kana gave a new impetus to the tensions, after the release of a video that appeared to show the man backing away from police when he was killed.

Protests have erupted in several Palestinian communities in Israel. Netanyahu, addressing the unrest, said, "To all those who are demonstrating and shouting their denunciation of Israel and support of a Palestinian state, I can say one simple thing: You are invited to move there — to the Palestinian Authority or to Gaza.”

Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 20 percent of the state's population of 8 million.

Tensions in Jerusalem and other Palestinian territories increased in July after Israelis kidnapped a Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir and burned him alive. The perpetrators said they carried out the murder in retribution for the killing of three Israeli teens in the Palestinian territories. Israel, which pinned the Israeli teens’ murders on Hamas, launched a series of deadly raids in the Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, police in Jerusalem clashed with protesters angry over Abu Khdeir’s murder.

One week after Abu Khdeir’s murder, Israel launched a war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The conflict lasted 50 days, decimated the territory’s infrastructure and killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians. A total of 69 Israelis were also killed, nearly all of them soldiers.

Al Jazeera and wire services. Ehab Zahriyeh contributed to this report.