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 Palestinian 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.”
In a new setback for efforts to restore calm, the Quartet of Mideast mediators – the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia – postponed a trip to the region. Edgar Vasquez, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs, said it was at the request of the Israeli government because of the circumstances.
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.
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 violence erupted over the Jewish New Year last month, fueled by rumors that Israel was plotting to take over a site holy to both Muslims and Jews. The rumors ignited clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian activists who hurled stones and firebombs at them, and the violence quickly spread across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel has dismissed the rumors as slanderous and repeatedly said there are no plans to alter a longstanding status quo at the spot, revered by Jews as the site of the biblical Temples and today home to Islam’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam.
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.
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