Palestinian youths throw stones at Israeli police Oct. 23 in Jerusalem.(Photo: Ilia Yefimovich, Getty Images)




JERUSALEM — Israel's latest fight with Hamas may have officially ended with a cease-fire in late August. But Palestinian violence in this city that both Jews and Arabs claim as their capital persists on a nearly daily basis, driven by the same anger that prompted the conflict in Gaza.


The frequent incidents received little international coverage until Wednesday, when a Palestinian drove his car into a crowd waiting at a Jerusalem light-rail train stop.


The assault, which police called a terrorist attack, left a 3-month-old girl with American citizenship dead and eight people wounded. The driver, Abd al-Rahman al-Shaludi, 20 — twice imprisoned by Israel for security offenses — was shot and killed by police as he tried to flee the scene.


Widespread rioting in Israel that began in July after the murder of an Arab teen by Jewish extremists settled down in much of the country before the Gaza fight ended — except in East Jerusalem. There, Palestinians have battled police, using rocks, fire bombs and firecrackers.


The attacks destroyed parts of the city's light-rail system, which Palestinians insist — despite the fact both Arabs and Jews use the trains — is a symbol of Israeli rule over the eastern part of the city and the West Bank, territories Israel captured in 1967.


Israelis fear such violence could spiral into a third intifada, or armed uprising, the last of which ignited in 2000 after Ariel Sharon, then head of Israel's right-wing opposition, visited the Temple Mount.


Today, clashes are of particular concern at that site — the holiest in Judaism and third-holiest in Islam — home to the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It's also where the First and Second Jewish Temples once stood.


Though Israel maintains security over the area, the Temple Mount is overseen by the Wakf Islamic Trust, which forbids Jews from praying there — an action also banned by Israeli officials. The trust doesn't want Jews to even visit.


Jewish attempts to visit the site in recent months — an act once prohibited by Israeli officials over fears of exacerbating tensions — sparked Palestinian rioting, which increased last week after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said such visits "desecrate" the Temple Mount.


"It is our sacred place," Abbas said at a conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "They have no right to go there."



Israeli border police patrol central Jerusalem on Oct. 23. Israel increased security to try to prevent Palestinian unrest, which has escalated over the past month.(Photo: Jim Hollander, epa)




Since this summer's fighting, Palestinians have ramped up attacks against the homes and property of hundreds of Jews who live in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem or in Jewish neighborhoods bordering Arab ones.


Young Israeli ultranationalists have carried out hundreds of "price tag" attacks throughout Israel and the West Bank since 2008 against property owned by the Israeli security forces and minorities, most notably Arabs and Christians. The extremists want to extract a price from the government for uprooting a few Jewish settlements and freezing the construction of others.


Other young Israelis have uprooted olive trees Palestinians rely on for the olive oil harvest, burned vehicles and written "Death to Arabs" graffiti on mosques and schools.


Though the Israeli government is cracking down on such extremists by making more arrests and holding those accused for a longer period of time in prison, Fatah and Hamas praised Wednesday's car attack, calling it a heroic act.


Despite heightened tensions, Samir Awad, a political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, predicts the violence will not lead to a full-blown intifada.


"What we're seeing is rock-throwing and Molotov cocktails," Awad says. "Abbas clearly supports this kind of grass-roots resistance but is against bombings and the other violence that characterized the previous uprisings."


The rioting "is a release of frustration by young Palestinians who face high unemployment, high Israeli taxes, but receive much poorer services than Jewish parts of the city," he says.


Udi Dekel, a retired Israeli general who serves as deputy director of the Institute of National Security Studies, says a full-scale intifada isn't in the interest of Palestinian leaders because they would lose their image as the "underdogs" while pursuing statehood through diplomatic channels.


Still, Dekel admits events in Jerusalem are always unpredictable.


"One very large terror attack could spur revenge from extremist right-wing Jews," he says. "That situation could be difficult to control."



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