1 killed, 11 injured in Israel bus station shooting

A Palestinian gunman went on a shooting rampage at the central bus station in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Sunday, killing a soldier and wounding 11 other people, police said.

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In one of the most serious Palestinian attacks against Israelis during this month's upsurge of violence, police said the attacker was shot dead after a protracted gun battle, police said.

Palestinian media outlets named the attacker as Asam al-Araj from Shuafat, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

A number of the wounded were police officers. Hospital officials said two people were in critical condition.

Initial reports had said two attackers were involved but the regional police commander said investigators later believed there was only one.

Police commander Yoram Halevy said the gunman had entered the secured bus station and used a pistol to kill the soldier and grab his assault rifle, which he then used to shoot others.

Forty-two Palestinians and eight Israelis have died in the recent violence, which was in part triggered by Palestinians' anger over what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque compound.

In public remarks on Sunday to his cabinet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We are preserving the status quo, we will continue to do so," referring to the Jerusalem holy site that is also revered by Jews as the location of two destroyed biblical temples.

The Palestinian dead this month include attackers wielding knives and protesters shot by Israeli forces during violent demonstrations. Israelis have been killed in random attacks in the street or on buses.

Two of the alleged assailants in the attacks on Israelis over the past two weeks were Israeli Arabs. The others were Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israeli media showed footage of a blood-streaked floor and rows of ambulances outside the bus station. Security camera footage from the bus station aired on Israeli TV showed what appeared to be a civilian shooting the attacker as soldiers and civilians crouched for cover nearby.

Israeli police deployed

In a bid to halt the fighting, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he would meet the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the coming days.

Israel has deployed thousands of police, backed up by troops, to maintain order following a spate of attacks, mostly stabbings, by Palestinian assailants. Those measures have so far failed to stop the violence.

The attack was one of the most serious incidents amid near-daily bouts of violence that has hit Israel and the Palestinian territories over the past month. After the attack, a crowd of Israelis gathered outside the bus station and chanted "death to Arabs."

The unrest erupted in Jerusalem a month ago over tensions surrounding a Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews and Muslims. It soon spread to Arab neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem and then to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel.

Struggle to contain attacks

Israel has struggled to contain near-daily attacks by Palestinian assailants. Authorities have blocked roads and placed checkpoints at the entrances of Palestinian neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem. Other security measures include ID checks and requiring some Palestinian residents to lift their shirts and roll up pant legs as they exit their neighbourhoods to prove they are not carrying knives. Soldiers have been deployed in Jerusalem and cities across Israel.

On Sunday, Israeli police erected a barrier to separate the Jewish neighbourhood of Armon Hanatziv from the adjacent Palestinian neighbourhood of Jabal Mukaber as part of the heightened security. A number of attackers have come from Jabal Mukaber.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the barrier, a row of six concrete slabs about five metres high, was meant to protect Armon Hanatziv from rocks and firebombs lobbed from Jabal Mukaber.

But erecting a barrier dividing areas of Jerusalem is a sensitive step, testing Israel's repeated statements over the years that the city is its undivided, eternal capital.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the area in a move that is not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state.

Barrier not political, says Israel

"This has no political meaning," said Emmanuel Nahshon, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry. "It's one more aspect of our security measures."

Samri, the police spokeswoman, said the barrier would remain "for as long as needed" and that it could be lengthened based on security needs.

On Sunday, the six slabs lined a sidewalk on a road between the Jewish and Arab neighbourhoods. Writing in Hebrew on the barrier said it was a "temporary, mobile police barrier." It did not prevent pedestrians from leaving or entering.

Palestinians said the roadblocks are collective punishment and ineffective in deterring attackers.

Israeli leaders say the violence is due to Palestinian incitement. But Palestinians say it is the result of years of Israeli occupation, failed peace efforts and lack of hope among their youth.

Much of that hopelessness is found in Arab areas of east Jerusalem. They complain of discrimination, noting that municipal services from education to garbage pickup in their areas are neglected.

Over the past month, nine Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, most of them stabbings. In that time, 41 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including 20 labeled by Israel as attackers, and the rest in clashes with Israeli troops.

The daily attacks have caused a sense of panic across Israel and raised fears that the region is on the cusp of a new round of heavy violence.

Netanyahu dividing city, say critics

Domestic critics say Netanyahu — long opposed to any negotiated partition of Jerusalem into two capitals — is effectively dividing the city along ethnic lines with his security measures.

"The great patriots ... who don't go to bed at night before praying for a unified, undivided, greater Jerusalem, are now proposing to dissect it, divide it and return it back 48 years in time," commentator Nehemiah Strassler wrote in the Israeli daily Haaretz.

Some warn that recent events — a rise in "lone wolf" attacks by Palestinians and Israeli crackdowns — offer a taste of the constant hate-filled skirmishes that would likely prevail for years if there's no deal on setting up Palestine next to Israel.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, rejects the notion that Palestinian attackers, including those in Jerusalem, are driven by anger over decades of Israeli rule.

He blames what he calls incitement to violence against Israel by Abbas and Palestinian Muslim leaders, including claims that Israel plans to erode Muslim-only prayer rights at a major Jerusalem shrine revered by Muslims and Jews. Netanyahu denies he intends to change the status quo, though senior coalition members have been pushing for Jewish prayer rights at the site.

"With respect to the Palestinian population [in Jerusalem], Israel has a lot of work to do, as it does with the social needs of its Jewish population," senior Netanyahu adviser Dore Gold told The Associated Press. "But the primary problem here are the deliberate lies being spread" about the shrine, he said.

The site is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, or home of their biblical Temples, and to Muslims as the Haram as-Sharif, marking the spot where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

"Israel has no interest in creating divisions in Jerusalem," Gold said of the dozens of road barriers that went up late last week. Israel "has a right to use the same security measures which every other city facing urban rioting has used," he added, suggesting the measures could be rolled back.