Violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank looked set to escalate Tuesday as four rabbis and a police officer were killed in an attack in a synagogue and Israel announced it was to ease restrictions on carrying weapons for self-defense.
Two Palestinians armed with a meat cleaver and a gun killed four worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue before being shot dead by police, the deadliest such incident in six years in the holy city. Three of the rabbis held dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship and the fourth was a British-Israeli national, police said.
A police officer critically wounded in the attack later died in hospital of his injuries, Israeli media reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of inciting violence in the city and said the killings, along with a spate of recent attacks, were part of a “battle over Jerusalem.”
“As a nation we will settle the score with every terrorist and their dispatchers, and we have proved we will do so, but no one may take the law into their own hands, even if spirits are riled and blood is boiling,” he said.
But earlier, directly after the attack, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch said Israel is to ease controls on carrying weapons for self-defense.
“In the coming hours, I will ease restrictions on carrying weapons,” he said in remarks broadcast on public radio, indicating it would apply to anyone with a license to carry a gun, such as private security guards and off-duty army officers.
Aharonovitch did not elaborate, but it is believed that under the planned changes security personnel would be allowed to carry their arms even when off duty.
There would also be a “tightening of controls on people coming and going” from areas of occupied East Jerusalem, where there have been almost daily clashes between police and stone-throwers for five months.
Abbas condemned the attack, which came after weeks of unrest fueled in part by a dispute over Jerusalem’s holiest site, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Photos distributed by Israeli authorities showed a man in a prayer shawl lying dead, a bloodied butcher’s cleaver on the floor and prayer books covered in blood.
U.S. President Barack Obama said: “I strongly condemn today’s terrorist attack on worshippers at a synagogue in Jerusalem, which killed four innocent people, including U.S. citizens Aryeh Kupinsky, Cary William Levine and Mosheh Twersky, and injured several more.”
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Obama said too many Israelis and Palestinians had died in recent violence and called on both sides to lower tensions. Violence in Jerusalem, other areas of Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories has surged in the past month. Abbas has said Muslims have a right to defend their sacred places if attacked.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the two assailants, both from Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, were shot dead by police in a gunbattle outside the synagogue. Netanyahu said Israel would demolish their homes.
The militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said it carried out the attack, calling it a “heroic operation.”
At least eight people were seriously wounded in the attack, including the police officer who later died of his injuries.
A day before the incident, a Palestinian bus driver was found hanged in his vehicle in Jerusalem. Israel said he committed suicide, but his family said he was attacked and mourners at his funeral chanted for revenge.
The synagogue attack was the worst in the city since 2008, when a Palestinian gunman killed eight people in a religious school.
