ANGER OVER AL-AQSA

The violence has been stirred in part by Muslim anger

over increasing Jewish visits to the al-Aqsa mosque
compound in Jerusalem, Islam's holiest site outside the
Arabian Peninsula.
With Israel's Jewish population increasingly afraid for its
safety, merchants reported that canisters of pepper spray
for self-defense were selling out.
"We don't know what to do, or where to walk," Avi
Shemesh, a witness to the first attack, told reporters.
"They are Israel-haters and they need to be eliminated."
In Raanana, just north of Tel Aviv, a Palestinian man
stabbed and lightly wounded an Israeli on a shopping
street during the morning rush hour, officials and
witnesses said.
Amateur video distributed by police showed several men
kicking and beating the alleged assailant as he lay on the
ground. The ambulance service said he had been
seriously hurt.
A shopkeeper said that, after hearing shouting, he had
grabbed a heavy wooden umbrella and run outside to
confront the assailant.
"He started stabbing the guy. I hit him a couple of times
and kicked him and the knife flew out of his hand," the
store owner said. "I wish I had a gun - I would have shot
him."
Within an hour, another Palestinian stabbed and wounded
four people in Raanana, police said.
And in the parking lot of an Ikea furniture store in
northern Israel, a Jewish man, who police said had
intended to carry out a revenge attack, stabbed and
wounded a fellow Jew, mistaking him for an Arab.
The main Palestinian factions, including the Westernbacked Fatah movement and the militant Hamas group,

had declared Tuesday a "Day of Rage" across the West

Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, accusing Israel of
"escalating its crimes against our people".
The leaders of Israel's Arab community called for a
commercial strike in their towns and villages.
NEW INTIFADA?
The now-daily stabbings have raised speculation that
Palestinians could be embarking on another uprising or
intifada, reflecting a new generation's frustrations over
their veteran leadership's failure to achieve statehood.
But in Geneva, where the Palestinians' flag was raised at
U.N. headquarters for the first time on Tuesday after their
promotion to "non-member observer state", Palestinian
Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said he did not expect a
new uprising.
He said Netanyahu - who has accused Palestinian leaders
of inciting violence - was seeking confrontation.
"He knows this is the only way how he is going to
continue killing innocent people: by claiming there is an
intifada and the Israelis are trying to defend themselves,"
Malki said.
The Palestinian Authority has echoed allegations swirling
around Arabic social media that some of the Palestinians
killed by police in the recent violence have in effect been
summarily executed.
Palestinians also see increasing visits over the past year
by Jewish groups and right-wing lawmakers to the al-Aqsa
plaza, revered by Jews as the site of two destroyed
biblical temples and Judaism's holiest place, as eroding
Muslim religious control of the compound.
Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he will not allow any
change to the status quo under which Jews are allowed to
visit the site but non-Muslim prayer is banned, but his

assurances have done little to quell alarm among Muslims

across the region.