One Israeli dead, five wounded in gun attack at bus station

An Israeli was killed and five others wounded on Sunday night when two Palestinians opened fire and stabbed passers-by at the central bus station in Beersheba, the largest city in southern Israel.

Troops and security guards opened fire, killing one of the gunmen and seriously wounding the second. An angry mob gathered at the scene shouting “death to the Arabs” and “Arabs out.”

The latest attack, in contrast to the more than 30 random stabbing incidents over the past two weeks, appeared to have been well-planned with the two armed men managing to enter the bus station despite one of the highest security alerts in Israel’s recent history. They then separated and started shooting at two locations in the bus station. One of the assailants succeeded in seizing an M-16 rifle from a soldier.

Prior to the Beersheba attack, Sunday had been relatively quiet as the security alert continued throughout Israel following two weeks of stabbings that have left seven Israelis dead in more than 30 attacks. More than 40 Palestinians, including many of the knife assailants, have been killed in the same period.

The wave of violence has prompted a massive security clampdown, with thousands of extra police and troops drafted to Jerusalem, the location of many of the attacks.

On Sunday, Israel placed a high concrete wall between the Jerusalem Palestinian village of Jabel Mukaber and the adjacent Jewish neighbourhood of east Talpiot, built over the green line on land captured during the 1967 Six-Day War. A number of the assailants who perpetrated the recent knife attacks were residents of Jabel Mukaber and petrol bombs are regularly thrown from the village, which lies within the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, into east Talpiot.

The new wall is meant to be a temporary construction, with writing on it indicating it is “a temporary mobile police roadblock”.

Israel has been reluctant to erect physical barriers between Palestinian and Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem arguing that the city as a whole must remain Israel’s undivided capital. However, the recent violence has necessitated emergency measures, strengthening the Palestinian claim that the Arab area of the city will eventually be separated and become the capital of a future Palestinian state.

The wave of stabbings prompted four Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, to impose a temporary ban on Arab labourers working in schools.

Dov Khenin, a member of the Knesset parliament from the mainly Arab Joint List, condemned the measure.

“Under cover of anxiety, dangerous measures of racist exclusion are being advanced,” he said.

Israel’s interior ministry appealed to local councils “to continue to act with respect and equality towards all their workers, irrespective of religion, ethnicity or gender”. However, local mayors defended the measure as a temporary move that came in response to parental fears.

US secretary of state John Kerry will meet Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Germany this week and then travel to the region for separate talks with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah. Ahead of the meeting in Germany, Israel and the US resumed talks in Jerusalem on Sunday on future military aid that Mr Netanyahu had suspended in protest over the nuclear deal the US and other world powers signed with Iran.

Israel responded angrily to a French proposal to deploy international monitors to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, saying it amounted to granting a prize to Palestinian terrorism.

Speaking after a fortnight of almost daily stabbing attacks against Israeli troops and civilians, Mr Netanyahu said Israel was not the problem at the site in Jerusalem’s Old City, sacred to both Jews and Muslims, but the solution.

“Israel cannot accept the French draft at the (United Nations) security council. It doesn’t mention Palestinian incitement, it doesn’t mention Palestinian terrorism, and it calls for the internationalisation of the Temple Mount.”

France is proposing a security council presidential statement, calling for international observers to be stationed at holy sites in Jerusalem, including the flashpoint Temple Mount, where two ancient Jewish temples stood and which is revered by Muslims as the Holy Sanctuary, the site of the al-Aqsa mosque.

Israeli officials accused the Palestinians of attempting to change the status quo at the site, warning that the Palestinian arson attack on the Jewish holy site of Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus last week would be repeated on the Temple Mount if Israel relinquished sovereignty.

Palestinian officials accuse Israel of encouraging Jewish extremists who seek to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque and build a new Jewish temple at the sacred compound. Jews are currently allowed to visit the area but not pray.

Pope Francis on Sunday appealed for an end to violence in the Holy Land, urging Israelis and Palestinians to take concrete steps to ease tensions.

“At this moment there is a need for much courage and much fortitude to say ‘no’ to hatred and vendettas and to make gestures of peace,” he told the crowd after a Mass in St Peter’s Square.