MEE Staff
Middle East Eye / January 28, 2023
Israeli security services on highest alert after shooting at settlement in the southern vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque a day after another attack killed seven people in East Jerusalem.
A shooting at a settlement in the Silwan neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem on Saturday wounded two Jewish settlers, according to Israeli police, which has yet to reveal the identity of the shooter.
The City of David settlement is located within the predominantly Palestinian district of Silwan, on the southern side of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israeli security services raised the security level to the highest alert after the shooting, which was the second in two days after a fatal shooting on Friday killed seven people outside a building used as a synagogue in the settlement of Neve Yaakov in East Jerusalem.
Israeli security forces killed Friday’s shooter, a Palestinian, and detained 42 members of his family.
The shooting on Friday came a day after Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians in the West Bank, nine of them during a large-scale raid in the Jenin refugee camp.
Israeli troops have killed 30 people this month in a sign of continued growing violence against Palestinians.
Last year, more Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem than in any single calendar year since the Second Intifada.
At least 220 people died in Israeli attacks across the occupied territories in 2022, including 48 children. Of the total death toll, 167 were from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and 53 were from the Gaza Strip.
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Two Israelis injured in occupied East Jerusalem shooting
Al-Jazeera / January 28, 2023
The incident comes a day after a Palestinian killed seven people near a synagogue following Israel’s deadly raid in the Jenin refugee camp.
Two people have been injured in a shooting outside the Old City in the Silwan neighbourhood, just outside occupied East Jerusalem’s old, walled city, Israel’s rescue emergency response service (MDA) and Israeli Army Radio said.
An MDA spokesperson said two gunshot victims, a father, 47, and son, 23, were in serious condition with “gunshot wounds to their upper body”.
A police spokesman told Army Radio that Saturday’s incident was a “terrorist attack” and that the assailant was “neutralized and injured”.
The incident comes a day after a Palestinian attacker killed seven people near a synagogue on the outskirts of the city.
On Thursday, Israel carried out a deadly raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Ten Palestinians were killed, including an elderly woman, after dozens of Israeli soldiers attacked a house the army said housed suspected fighters, leading to several hours of intense confrontations.
It was one of the deadliest Israeli army raids in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, of 2000 to 2005.
A 22-year-old Palestinian man was also shot by Israeli forces in the town of al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, on Thursday.
Israel also launched multiple air attacks on the blockaded Gaza Strip overnight on Thursday.
Local sources in Gaza told Al-Jazeera that Israeli warplanes had hit al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of the territory, with at least 13 strikes by the early hours of Friday.
Police arrested 42 Palestinians following Friday’s attack.
“The Jerusalem District Police and border police fighters arrested 42 suspects — some of them from the terrorist’s (immediate) family, relatives and (neighbours)”, a police statement said.
In a separate statement, police said the force had been placed on the “highest level” of alert following the attack.
Before Friday’s shooting, at least 30 Palestinians had been killed this year and the Palestinian Authority, which has limited governing powers in the West Bank, said it was suspending a security cooperation arrangement with Israel.
More to follow
SOURCE: AL-JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
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Palestinian gunman wounds 2, day after 7 killed in Jerusalem
Isabel Debre
AP / January 28, 2023
JERUSALEM – A Palestinian gunman opened fire in east Jerusalem on Saturday, wounding two people, Israeli medics said, less than a day after another assailant killed seven outside a synagogue in the deadliest attack in the city since 2008.
The shooting in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in east Jerusalem, near the historic Old City, wounded a father and son, ages 47 and 23, paramedics said. Both were fully conscious and in moderate to serious condition in the hospital, the medics added.
Police said they shot the attacker, wounding him. He was evacuated to a hospital, they said, and there was no further word on his condition.
Authorities taped off the scene of the attack and emergency vehicles and security forces swarmed the area as helicopters whirled overhead.
Saturday’s events — just a day before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to arrive in the region —raised the possibility of even greater conflagration in one of the bloodiest months in Israel and the occupied West Bank in several years. On Friday, a Palestinian gunman killed at least seven people, including a 70-year-old woman, in a Jewish settlement with a large ultra-Orthodox population in east Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move not internationally recognized.
The attacks pose pivotal test for Israel’s new far-right government. Its firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has presented himself as an enforcer of law and order and grabbed headlines for his promises to take even stronger action against the Palestinians.
Prime Minister Benjamin said he would convene his Security Cabinet on Saturday night, after the end of the sabbath, to discuss a further response to the attack near the synagogue. Israeli police launched a security crackdown early on Saturday.
Security forces fanned out into the neighborhood of the 21-year-old Palestinian gunman, arresting 42 of his family members and neighbors for questioning in the At-Tur neighborhood in east Jerusalem. Police Chief Kobi Shabtai beefed up forces across the city and instructed police to work 12-hour shifts, the statements said, urging the public to call a hotline if they see anything suspicious.
The earlier Friday attack, which occurred as residents were observing the Jewish sabbath, came a day after an Israeli military raid killed nine Palestinians in the West Bank that prompted a rocket barrage from Gaza and retaliatory Israeli airstrikes.
Although calm had appeared to take hold after the limited exchange of fire between Israel and Gaza militants, tensions were running high in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Thursday’s raid, deadliest single incursion in the occupied territory since 2002, followed a particularly bloody month that saw at least 30 Palestinians — militants and civilians — killed in in confrontations with Israelis in the West Bank, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
Israel says most of the dead were militants. But youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations also have been killed.
Israel says its raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart attacks. The Palestinians say they further entrench Israel’s 55-year, open-ended occupation of the West Bank, captured along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war.
