* Separate incidents in Tel Aviv, occupied West Bank
* Israeli-Palestinian strife over Jerusalem holy site
(Releads for soldier's death)
By Jeffrey Heller
JERUSALEM, Nov 10 (Reuters) - An Israeli soldier and a woman
were stabbed to death by Palestinians in Tel Aviv and the
occupied West Bank on Monday, extending a surge in violence
fuelled by strife over access to Jerusalem's holiest site.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to crush "terror
being directed at all parts of the country" - remarks appearing
to clash with Israeli security chiefs' assertions that the
tumult did not yet spell a new Intifada, or Palestinian revolt.
The soldier's stabbing at a train station in Tel Aviv,
Israel's commercial capital, brought bloodshed to a city that
has largely been spared since the last uprising died down in
2005. Police identified the suspected assailant, who was
arrested, as a West Bank resident who was in Israel illegally
and had no criminal record there.
Hours later, a Palestinian stormed out of a car to stab an
Israeli woman to death and wound two other people outside the
Jewish settlement of Alon Shvut in the West Bank, police said.
The attacker was shot and wounded by a guard, they added.
The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed him as one of its own
and an Israeli security official said he had been jailed between
2000 and 2005 for a petrol bomb attack.
Tension has risen anew over Israeli-controlled access to
Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site,
where biblical Jewish temples once stood.
Stone-throwing protests have erupted in several Arab towns
in Israel since Saturday, when police killed an Arab youth who
assaulted them. Last week, a Palestinian rammed his car into
pedestrians in central Jerusalem, the second such incident in as
many weeks, killing two Israelis. Police shot the driver dead.
There was no immediate comment on Monday's stabbings from
the U.S.-backed administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas, which is based in the West Bank, whose peace talks with
the Netanyahu government collapsed in April.
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group with de facto control
over the Gaza Strip, where it fought a war with Israeli forces
in July and August, hailed the attacks as "a response to crimes
conducted by the occupation (Israel) in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa".
Israel refers to the Al-Aqsa compound as the Temple Mount
and some Jewish nationalists have been stepping up demands to
pray there, infuriating Palestinians despite Netanyahu's
repeated vow to maintain a decades-old arrangement with Jordan -
the compound's custodian since 1924 - that only Muslims may
worship there.
Speaking in parliament, Netanyahu said "terror ... is being
directed at all parts of the country for a simple reason: the
terrorists, the inciters, want to drive us from everywhere".
"As far as they are concerned, we should not be in
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or anywhere. I can promise you one thing -
they will not succeed. We will continue to fight terror ... and
we will defeat it together," he said.
Jordan blames Israel for the crisis, saying the growth of
Jewish settlements on occupied land that Palestinians seek for a
state, coupled with increased visits to Al-Aqsa by Jewish
ultra-nationalists under police guard, have inflamed passions.
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams, Allyn Fisher-Ilan and
Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Kevin Liffey)
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