Israeli police arrest a Palestinian man after the fatal stabbing of two Israeli men in a Tel Aviv office building on Thursday.Moti Milrod/The Associated Press
Five people were killed Thursday in two stabbing and shooting attacks carried out by Palestinian assailants in Tel Aviv and the West Bank, according to Israeli authorities, in a renewed burst of deadly violence that came after a few days of relative calm.
The fatalities included three Israelis, an 18-year-old American yeshiva student and a Palestinian passerby.
In the first attack, a Palestinian from the West Bank stabbed Israelis at the entrance of a store that served as an informal synagogue in Tel Aviv, killing two Israeli men and wounding a third. Witnesses said the attacker had then tried to force his way into the prayer room, but worshippers blocked the door.
Soon after, in the Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank, a Palestinian man opened fire with a submachine gun from a car as he passed vehicles stopped in traffic. He then crashed his car into another vehicle, according to witnesses and police reports. Three people were killed and several others were injured.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page, "Behind these terrorist attacks stands radical Islam, which seeks to destroy us, the same radical Islam that struck in Paris and threatens Europe."
Seeking more understanding from around the world for Israel's security challenges, Mr. Netanyahu added: "Whoever condemned the attacks in France must condemn the attacks in Israel. It's the same terrorism. Anyone who does not do so is acting hypocritically and blindly."
Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel would "settle accounts" with the perpetrators, exact a price from their families and destroy their homes. The homes of several Palestinians charged in attacks have been demolished in recent weeks in what the Israelis describe as a deterrent measure.
The victims of the Tel Aviv attack were identified as Aharon Yesayev, 32, and Reuven Aviram, 51, both from central Israel.
Of the three victims in the West Bank, an Israeli man who died was identified as Yaakov Don, 51, a resident of a nearby settlement who worked in education and was a father of four. The Palestinian victim was named as Shadi Arafa, 24, an employee of a Palestinian cellphone company.
Acquaintances of the American victim, Ezra Schwartz, from Sharon, Mass., said he had been spending a gap year in Israel between high school and college and was participating in a program of study and volunteering at a yeshiva in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh. On the day he was killed, according to Ynet, an Israeli news site, Mr. Schwartz and fellow students had distributed food and candy to Israeli soldiers in the Etzion district and visited a memorial for three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and killed in June, 2014, after they hitched a ride near where Thursday's shooting attack took place.
Police identified the assailant in the Tel Aviv stabbing as a father of five from the village of Dura in the southern West Bank. The Israeli news media said he had a permit to work in Israel and was employed at a restaurant near the scene of the attack. He was overpowered by passersby and taken into custody.
At least 16 Israelis have been killed in stabbing, vehicular and shooting attacks by Palestinians since the beginning of October, and an Eritrean man was killed by a mob after he was mistaken for an assailant. About 90 Palestinians have been killed over the same period, some of them while attacking, or trying to attack, Israelis, and others in clashes with Israeli security forces. Thursday was the deadliest single day in the recent wave of violence.
Thursday's killings came hours after Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed a long-awaited agreement granting Palestinian cellphone carriers 3G high-speed cellular services in the West Bank. The move, intended to bolster economic development, had indicated a possible effort, or desire, to return to calm after weeks of violence.
"We always agreed to confidence-building measures with the Palestinians and to help with their economy," an Israeli minister, Yuval Steinitz, said in a briefing with foreign reporters this month. But Mr. Steinitz said Israel expected action from Palestinian leaders to end what he described as incitement to violence in the news media.
West Bank cities have many smartphone users and a burgeoning high-tech industry, but Palestinian carriers have been forced to make do with 2G data bandwidth, which was introduced to the area in 1998.
Under the interim peace accords of the mid-1990s, Israel controls the allocation of radio frequencies in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule. For the Palestinians, the lack of 3G service has been a sore point and, they say, a symbol of how the Israeli occupation has held them back.