Two Weeks of Unabated Israeli Clashes Leave Dozens Dead, Including Children

Palestinian officials have condemned the security measures — the most serious clampdown in the Jerusalem area since a Palestinian uprising a decade ago — as collective punishment, according to Reuters.

The two weeks of bloodshed have already resulted in the deaths of at least 30 Palestinians, including children and alleged assailants and seven Israelis.

The deaths of minors have sparked an outcry among Palestinians; they have included teens that the Israelis have claimed were assailants as well as a toddler.

Earlier on Sunday an Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian mother and her two-year-old daughter in the Gaza Strip. Israel said its aircraft had targeted a Hamas facility in the Gaza Strip after rockets were fired across the border. The woman and her child were killed when their house, which was close to the facility, collapsed, according to Palestinian medical officials.

Four other Palestinians were wounded, including the woman’s husband and son.

Another video, which shocked the internet, is that of Hassan Manasra, 15, who was critically wounded by the police and left to die. His cousin, Ahmed Manasra, 13, suffered a serious injury.

The incident took place on Monday near the Israeli settlement of Pisgat Zeev in Jerusalem and was condemned by a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who accused Israeli authorities of “summarily executing” a 15-year-old Palestinian teen.

Police responded that earlier on the same day, the two had “stabbed a 13-year-old Jewish boy, wounding him critically, and went on to stab Yosef Ben Shalom,21, wounding him seriously”.

An image of a female of 15-year-old from East Jerusalem also shows her surrounded by motionless police. The teen was shot and wounded after allegedly stabbing a Border Policeman, leaving him with light injuries.

The violence has been partly triggered by Palestinians' anger over what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, also revered by Jews as the site of two destroyed Jewish temples.

Michael Kobi, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies, has explained to Radio Sputnik the reason for the recent eruption of such violence.

“There are some essential reasons for this violence and there are some contextual ones,” he said.

“The contextual reasons are related to the Al-Aqsa, the Palestinian view on it and the intentions of the Israeli government to change the status quo there, some provocations that have been done there. This is some sort of the continuation of the British terror attack in Duma (a Palestinian village in the West Bank) with Dawabsha family. And there is a sort of inspiration of some religious and national sentiments. And all of this fuels the atmosphere.”

“And some essential reasons are related to the trends that we see in the Palestinian society in Jerusalem and in the West Bank as well.”

“There is a sort of transitional process of the Palestinian society. We see that all the traditional society mechanisms that assisted in containing the violence, from parents and family, through the educational system and the institutional system – they are not efficient any more. There is no horizon that these young people could see in front of them and there is no mechanism that could restrain them,” he explained.

In this situation, he says, the Israeli authorities have to concentrate on two types of efforts: first, the stabilization efforts, meaning all the efforts that are required to calm the atmosphere, to decrease the level of violence. Then, he says, the government should undertake very serious so-called 'shaping' efforts, meaning all the efforts which should tackle the essential problems and challenges — the long-term solutions, he said.