Israel closes West Bank and Gaza Strip crossings

Palestinians use the holy month to visit family members in Israel, attend prayers in Jerusalem and travel overseas from Tel Aviv airport.

Benjamin Netanyahu says: “This nation is strong”.

 The shooting came after a relative lull in daily stabbing attacks across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. He spoke Thursday after holding a special meeting of his Security Cabinet.

Rosenfeld said that in February, Palestinian attackers used a “Carlo” to kill a young policewoman in Jerusalem.

Rosenfeld said the man at the officer’s home was not armed while he was there.

On Wednesday night two Palestinians from a village near Hebron entered a restaurant in the Sarona Market in downtown Tel Aviv and opened fire, killing four. Israeli military has been accused several times of practicing collective punishment against the Palestinian people as an official policy. Hundreds are believed to be in circulation, he added, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters.

Tel Aviv district police chief Moshe Edri told Haaretz there was no prior terror alert before the shooting took place.

The attack, the Shia group asserted, “shows that all forms of injustice and aggression practiced by the Zionists and their clients in the region and world will not shake the determination of the Palestinian people or make them waive their inalienable right to their land”.

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the defence ministry unit which manages civilian affairs in the West Bank, said that about 10,000 Palestinian permit-holders were exempt from the ban and were being allowed into Jerusalem for Muslim prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque complex marking the first Friday of Ramadan.

The violence has declined in recent weeks, though attacks have continued. “An attack against innocent people is always reprehensible, there can be no justification for shooting civilians in the street”, he said.

But Tel Aviv, Israel’s most cosmopolitan city, has not been spared. “Above all, Michael was the incarnation of a man of reason, tolerance and peace”.

He said that these included cancelling the work permits of the terrorists’ families and bolstering forces in the West Bank, with two additional battalions moved into the area.

The Israeli military revoked permits for 83,000 Palestinians to visit Israel and said it would send hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank after the Palestinian gun attack.

The Israeli army said that it was temporarily barring all Palestinians from entering the country, following an incident in Tel Aviv where Palestinian gunmen shot dead four Israelis, Agence France-Presse reported.