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JERUSALEM
- The Mamilla Mall, an upscale Jerusalem shopping street popular with
fashion-conscious residents of all backgrounds, was desolate on
Wednesday.
JERUSALEM
— The Mamilla Mall, an upscale Jerusalem shopping street popular with
fashion-conscious residents of all backgrounds, was desolate on
Wednesday.
By
lunchtime Hanit Tzeti, 35, had seen only two customers at the maternity
clothing store where she works. “They came, bought and fled,” she said.
“People are afraid.”
Israelis were in little mood for browsing after more than two dozen attacks, most by young Palestinians
armed with knives, that have killed seven Israelis this month, five of
them in Jerusalem. At least 12 suspects in the attacks have been fatally
shot by Israeli security forces and citizens at the scenes. Some Palestinians said they were scared of being mistaken for an assailant.
New
Israeli security measures introduced Wednesday included roadblocks and
checkpoints at entrances of some Palestinian neighborhoods of East
Jerusalem, and the deployment of reserve soldiers to bolster police
forces.
The
Israeli interior minister, Silvan Shalom, said he had decided to revoke
the residency status of 19 Palestinians from East Jerusalem who the
authorities say were involved in the recent attacks. The revocations
amount to what rights advocates call illegal deportation orders. They
also invalidate family benefits like health insurance.
Heightened Security in Jerusalem
Responding to a wave of Palestinian
knife attacks in recent days, Israeli police have increased security and
roadblocks across the country, particularly in Arab areas of East
Jerusalem.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on Publish Date October 14, 2015.
Photo by Dusan Vranic/Associated Press.
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The
clampdown did not completely stop the violence. A young Palestinian
wearing military-style fatigues rushed at officers with a knife at the
Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday afternoon, according
to the police account, and the officers fatally shot him. Two hours
later an attacker stabbed and wounded a woman around age 70 as she was
about to board a bus in West Jerusalem, and an officer in the vicinity
shot him, the police said. The assailant’s condition was not immediately
clear.
The Israeli measures exposed the deep and complex fissures in Jerusalem, a mixed and contested city that Israel claims as its united, sovereign capital, but that is politically, economically and culturally divided.
Shaer
Zeidani, 24, a Palestinian cook at a popular cafe in the Mamilla Mall,
where tables were mostly empty, said he had taken a taxi to work from
his East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. “It’s impossible to walk,” he
said. “I get stopped all the time by the police; they suspect me.” He
said some other Arab employees of nearby stores had not come to work.
During
the second Palestinian uprising, which broke out in 2000, Jerusalem and
other cities were hit by suicide bombings largely carried out by
Palestinians from the West Bank. The Israeli military invaded the
Palestinian cities and constructed a security barrier of walls and
fences along and inside the West Bank in an effort to stop them.
This
time, the majority of the perpetrators have been East Jerusalem
residents armed with knives, and most of the attacks have taken place
within the city.
Israel
captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war, then annexed it in
a move that has never been internationally recognized. The Palestinians
demand East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state, and
much of the world considers it illegally occupied.
Most
of the 300,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem chose not to
apply for Israeli citizenship and hold permanent residency status,
allowing them to work and move freely throughout Israel. Making up about
a third of the city’s total population, many have a better standard of
living than Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza.
But according to data collected by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies,
an independent Israeli research center, about 77 percent of Arab
families in Jerusalem are below the poverty line by Israeli standards,
compared with about 21 percent of the city’s Jewish families.
About 200,000 Jewish Israelis now live in East Jerusalem, across the 1967 boundary but within the city limits.
Several
leading Israeli commentators interpreted the Israeli government’s
decision to authorize partial closings of Palestinian neighborhoods as
an admission that Israel’s declared unification of Jerusalem had failed.
In a column in the Israeli daily Maariv, Ben Caspit, a frequent critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of Israel, said he was “dividing Jerusalem.” The “partial blockade” on
East Jerusalem neighborhoods that “puts up a partition between us and
them,” Mr. Caspit wrote, “will not last, and certainly will not stop
stabbers.”
While
Israel accuses the Palestinian leadership of participating in the
incitement to violence, Palestinians called the new Israeli security
measures a disproportionate response of collective punishment that will
only worsen the tensions.
“East
Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine,” Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestine
Liberation Organization official, said on Voice of Palestine radio. “If
they think that they can reach security with these measures, they are
wrong. The Palestinian people will continue to defend themselves.”
Three
Israelis were killed on Tuesday alone in Jerusalem: two in an attack on
a bus at the juncture of Jewish and Arab areas, after two assailants
boarded it armed with a knife and a gun, and one pedestrian in an
ultra-Orthodox neighborhood who was rammed by a vehicle and then hit with a meat cleaver. All three assailants came from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabel Mukaber.
On
Wednesday morning, the police closed one of three entrances to the
neighborhood, a vast Palestinian area of hilly roads. Another was
half-closed — some residents were stopped for questioning, but others
were waved through.
“More
than 50,000 people live here, and they are punishing the entire
village,” complained a man who asked to be identified by his nickname,
Abu Anas, and who said he was trying to take his teenage son to a health
clinic. “This is a racist decision and will only bring about more
violence in their neighborhoods.”
In
Issawiya, another East Jerusalem neighborhood frequently roiled by
clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli forces, troops bolstered
security at a checkpoint that has been in place intermittently since an
Israeli gas station was vandalized last fall.
On a rocky plateau overlooking the area, more than a dozen officers held rifles as they inspected cars going in and out.
“It’s
a difficult situation; it’s not convenient for anyone,” said one border
police officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was
not permitted to talk publicly. “It’s not what we want; it’s what we
need to do.”
The
intimacy of the violence is also finding expression in the measures
Israelis are taking to protect themselves. Unlike the suicide bombings,
stabbing attacks can involve more of a struggle. One Israeli passer-by
helped subdue the perpetrator of Tuesday’s meat cleaver attack by
hitting him with a selfie stick.
The only stores doing brisk business in Jerusalem were those selling tear gas, pepper spray, stun guns
and batons, though several have run out. Yitzhak Mizrachi, owner of the
downtown Magnum 2525 gun store and shooting range, said his sales had
doubled.
The
public security minister, Gilad Erdan, approved steps on Wednesday that
would make it easier for civilians to obtain gun permits. Several
Israelis, he said, had helped the police in stopping assailants.
Ynet,
an Israeli news site, posted a video in which a burly Israeli boxing
champion and Krav Maga expert, Ran Nakash, demonstrated how to repel a
stabber. He recommended arm-blocking movements and a groin kick.
Although many Israelis are anxious and on alert, many are also defiant and say life must go on.
“If
we are afraid, we are lost,” said Ami Benayoun, 53, sitting at a table
outside an ice cream shop on West Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road. He said he was
not carrying any means of self-defense. “I have just my hands,” he
said.
A
driving instructor was flying Israeli flags from his back windows in a
gesture usually reserved for Independence Day. And a well-known West
Jerusalem dog-walker advertised a new service on Facebook this week,
offering to accompany children to school for no charge.
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Thursday, October 15, 2015
Jerusalem Grows More Grim and Polarized With Clampdown
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