Two border policemen were slightly wounded Tuesday by a knife-wielding assailant in the Old City. No one was reportedly arrested for the act.
The incident, the latest in the wave of random attacks on Jews by Arabs, has again escalated tension between the two communities, which had already been running high since the Temple Mount riots on Oct. 8.
The incident added to the day’s toll. In the Jordan Valley, a reserve soldier was killed by a teen-age infiltrator from Jordan. That assailant reportedly was a member of Islamic Jihad.
On Monday night, two Jewish settlers barely escaped injury when they were attacked near an Arab village in the West Bank.
Following Tuesday’s attacks on the border policemen, some 30 Arabs were detained for questioning. No arrests were reported.
Eyewitnesses described the culprit as a man of about 20, dressed in white and wielding a kitchen knife.
The assault occurred shortly after 9 a.m. on Haggai Street, a crowded thoroughfare running from the Nablus Gate to the Western Wall. The assailant stabbed one officer in the neck. He grappled with the other, inflicting a slight wound on his hand before he escaped.
One of the officers fired a shot into the air but did not shoot at the fleeing attacker because of the many pedestrians in the way.
Police reinforcements poured into the Old City and body searches were conducted at every corner.
The police wore their new bullet-proof vests to protect against knife attacks. “Every Arab is a potential killer,” one of them was quoted as saying.
Arabs clung together in groups of five or six for fear of Jewish avengers. But Jews have completely deserted the eastern part of the city since the attacks began and take long detours to avoid Arab neighborhoods.
In the West Bank there was fear and anger following Monday evening’s attack on twin brothers from Tzur Natan, a Jewish settlement near Kfar Sava.
Twenty-year-olds Alon and Doron Salame were driving their Arab workers home and had just dropped them off near Jamal village when their car came under a hail of stones.
One attacker attempted to stab the driver.
The brothers abandoned the car and fled to the nearby settlement of Slait.
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