Israel stepped up security nationwide on Tuesday after a soldier and a settler were killed in separate Palestinian knife attacks as months of unrest in Jerusalem spread across the country.
Thousands of police deployed at potential flashpoints as Palestinians held low key ceremonies to mark 10 years since the death of their iconic leader Yasser Arafat in mysterious circumstances in a hospital near Paris.
Om Monday, a 17-year-old Palestinian in Tel Aviv stabbed a 20-year-old soldier who later died of his wounds in hospital. The assailant fled but was arrested. Hours later, a Palestinian attacked three Israelis outside the Alon Shvut settlement in the southern West Bank, killing a young woman and wounding two other people before a security guard shot and critically wounded him.
The bloodshed followed months of clashes between Israeli security forces and stone-throwing Palestinians in and around annexed east Jerusalem. The unrest spread to Arab areas of Israel at the weekend after police shot dead a young Arab-Israeli during a routine arrest operation.
With the public increasingly on edge, Israel once again boosted security measures.
"The police have been placed on an advanced state of alert. Thousands of police, officers, volunteers and reinforcements have been deployed across the country to ensure the security of the public," police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP.
Following the Tel Aviv attack -- carried out by a Palestinian staying in Israel without a permit -- police began a nationwide crackdown on illegals, she said.
The authorities urged the public to "be vigilant" and report "any suspicious vehicle or individual".
The growing sense of fear on the streets has evoked memories of the second deadly Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which began in 2000.
"This is the same soundtrack that we all remember from the days of the intifada: you haven't yet had time to come to terms with the morning's terror attack... And your heart skips a beat because you know that within an hour or two there is going to be another," commentator Alex Fishman wrote in the top-selling Yediot Aharonot. "You've come to feel that same oppressive sense of threat to your personal safety, and everyone... Begins to ask themselves: should I or shouldn't I drive into Jerusalem? Should I or shouldn't I board the bus?"
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