The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh came amid weeks of violence in which Arab assailants have carried out fatal attacks in several Israeli cities, prompting the Israeli military to step up what it described as counterterrorist operations in the occupied West Bank, causing additional deaths.
Recently, during the holy month of Ramadan, Palestinian protesters and Israeli police officers repeatedly clashed at a holy site in Jerusalem revered by Muslims as the Aqsa Mosque compound and by Jews as the Temple Mount.
The Israeli Army has focused arrest raids in and around Jenin, where Ms. Abu Akleh was killed on Wednesday. Some of the Palestinians suspected of perpetrating the recent attacks hailed from Jenin and its refugee camp, long hotbeds of militancy in the northern West Bank.
The two Palestinian men accused of carrying out an ax attack that killed three Israeli civilians last week in the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish town of Elad came from Rumana, part of the Jenin district. Israeli troops raided the village on Sunday night, arresting two people. The military said they were suspected of assisting the assailants.
The wave of attacks began in late March, when a Palestinian man from the West Bank who sympathized with the Islamic State fatally stabbed a Moldovan worker in an apartment in Jerusalem, apparently mistaking him for an Israeli Jew, according to the police.
Since then, Arab assailants have carried out fatal attacks in the Israeli cities of Beersheba, Hadera, Tel Aviv and Bnei Brak, in addition to Elad. Palestinian gunmen also killed an Israeli guard at the entrance of Ariel, a large Jewish settlement in the heart of the West Bank.
At least 19 people тАФ 16 Israelis and three foreign workers тАФ have been killed in attacks by Arabs since late March, according to the Israeli authorities.
During the same period, more than 30 Palestinians have been killed, according to local news reports. Most were involved in attacks, attempted attacks or confrontations with Israeli forces, according to official Israeli accounts, though some were unarmed or apparently caught in crossfire.
