Recent months’ reprisal killings in and around Jerusalem can be traced to June.<br /><br />That is when three abducted Israeli teenagers were found murdered, and more crimes followed. <br /><br />Already heavy security was tightened amid fears of another Intifada uprising but there was a slight easing of pressure last Friday. <br /><br />After weeks of on-again-off-again lockdown around the al Aqsa Mosque, Muslims were allowed to pray. <br /><br />Hard-right Jews had been demanding praying rights themselves at their own holy sites in the vicinity.<br /><br />They were protesting a longstanding precautionary ban at Temple Mount by the Israeli authorities.<br /><br />The Palestinians condemned the new demands as provocation.<br /><br />In July, when extremists from the Jewish enclave of Isawiya in East Jerusalem burned to death a Palestinian teen, following discovery of the Israeli teenagers’ bodies, Arab East Jerusalemites rioted.<br /><br />Israel has ruled Arab East Jerusalem since the 1967 war, when it captured it from Jordan. <br /><br />In 1980, it declared the whole city its indivisible capital.<br /><br />No other country recognised this de facto annexation, and so East Jerusalem is widely referred to as a part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.<br /><br />Adding to an explosive atmosphere, the Israeli authorities this week have approved still more plans for the construction of new housing units — 200 in the Ramot hillside complex at the northern edge of Jerusalem.<br /><br />This also is land Israel captured in the 1967 war.<br /><br />Israel says Jews have a historic right to live anywhere in the city; 196,000 Jewish settlers live in the eastern part, and 282,000 Palestinians.<br /><br />In the West Bank Palestinian Territories, some 310,000 settlers live among more than 2.3 million Palestinians.<br /><br />Late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered planning to go ahead for some 1,000 new units on annexed land – in Har Homa and Ramat Shlomo, in southern and northern East Jerusalem, respectively.<br /><br />Palestinian and international officials view settlement building as a major obstacle to the creation of an independent state the Palestinians seek, with East Jerusalem as its capital. <br /><br />Most countries view the settlements as illegal.
