Expenses for Israeli Trip

JERUSALEM — Six people were killed on Friday (July 21) in an outbreak of violence that erupted over Israel’s placement of metal detectors at entrances to the sacred Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and spread to the West Bank.

Three Israelis were killed in what appeared to be a terrorist attack in a West Bank settlement hours after three Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces.

According to the Israeli authorities, a Palestinian entered a home in the Halamish settlement on Friday night, fatally stabbed three civilians — two men and a woman — and wounded another woman, before being shot at the scene. The names of the Israeli victims were not immediately made public.

The Israeli police said rioters threw rocks and firebombs and set off fireworks in the direction of the security forces, endangering them.

The victims of the attack at the settlement were members of a family who had gathered for a traditional Sabbath eve meal. A neighbor, a soldier on furlough, heard the family’s cries for help and shot the assailant through a window, according to reports in the Israeli news media.

The clashes came as thousands of Palestinian Muslims prayed in front of police barricades in the streets around the Old City of Jerusalem after a tense, weeklong standoff over the metal detectors and other restrictions.

The metal detectors were introduced after a brazen attack on the morning of July 14, when three armed Arab citizens of Israel emerged from Al Aqsa Mosque and fatally shot two Israeli Druze police officers who were guarding an entrance to the compound. The assailants ran back inside the courtyard and were killed after an exchange of fire with other officers, who had pursued them.

After the attack, in a rare move, Israel temporarily closed the contested and volatile holy site — which is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary — and emptied it of all workers while the police conducted searches.

The Israeli government’s decision to introduce metal detectors when the site reopened rapidly became a source of friction and a symbolic rallying cry in the contest for control and sovereignty over the sacred compound. In an extraordinary turn, members of the Waqf, the Muslim trust that administers the site, called for a boycott of prayers there for as long as the metal detectors remained in place.