A shooting in the occupied West Bank and a car-ramming in Tel Aviv killed two Israelis and a tourist on Friday, amid soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions touched off by a raid on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque.
The three deaths capped a day of violence during which Israeli jets struck sites linked to the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, after militants in the two territories fired salvos of rockets at Israel on Thursday.
Although the exchange of fire between Israel and militants in Lebanon and Gaza ended without fatalities or escalating into a broader conflict, the later killings on Friday underscored the breadth of the security challenges facing Israel’s hardline new government. It took office with ultranationalists in key security posts pledging a hardline stance against the Palestinians.
In the first incident, two Israeli sisters were killed and their mother was seriously injured when their car came under fire near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
Later on Friday, an Italian tourist was killed and five others were injured when a car drove at speed on to a cycle path near the beach in Tel Aviv. The city’s police chief Ami Ashad said police had “classif[ied] this as a terrorist attack” but were also checking “other possibilities”.
Hamas praised both attacks, but stopped short of claiming responsibility.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently ordered police and the army to mobilise additional forces to bolster security.
The latest cycle of violence comes as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover festival coincided. It follows days of tensions in Jerusalem after Israeli police raided the al-Aqsa mosque on consecutive nights to remove Palestinians trying to remain in the compound overnight.
Footage of heavily armed Israeli forces beating Palestinians in the mosque sparked outrage in the Arab world. On Thursday, militants in southern Lebanon fired 34 rockets at Israel, the biggest barrage from the country since Israel and the Iran-backed group Hizbollah fought a 34-day war in 2006.
In the early hours of Friday, Israel responded with air strikes in both southern Lebanon and Gaza. But in an indication that both Israel and Hizbollah were trying to avoid being drawn into a broader conflict, Israeli officials said they believed Palestinian militants, not Hizbollah, had been behind the rocket fire. The Israeli strikes in Lebanon targeted agricultural fields, and militants in Lebanon did not return fire.
Yet even as an uneasy calm descended on Israel’s northern and southern borders, the situation in the West Bank and Israel remained volatile.
Israel’s police commissioner urged all citizens with gun licences to carry weapons in the wake of the killing of the two sisters in the West Bank. And police said they would deploy additional forces in Jerusalem for the rest of Ramadan, during which hundreds of thousands of Muslims traditionally visit al-Aqsa, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The compound, the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest in Judaism, is one of the most sensitive places in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Clashes there have sparked broader conflagrations, including an 11-day war between Israel and militants in Gaza two years ago.
Israel has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including the Old City, where the al-Aqsa compound is located, since 1967.
Under the so-called status quo agreement, both Muslims and non-Muslims can visit the site, but only Muslims are allowed to pray there. In recent years, however, Jewish groups have also prayed there, stoking anxiety among Muslims that the status quo was being eroded.
Those fears have been exacerbated by the presence of ultranationalists in Israel’s hardline new government, such as security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a settler who has long called for Jewish prayer at al-Aqsa. Netanyahu on Thursday said the status quo would not change.
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