Dubai: Four Palestinians and four Israelis were killed in Palestine yesterday as Palestinians resisting Israel’s occupation declared a ‘day of rage’.

Palestinian men armed with knives and a gun killed at least four people and wounded several others in a string of attacks in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv on Tuesday, the Israeli occupation’s police said.

Regime officials said Israel’s public security minister was considering whether to seal off Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, home of many of the Palestinian assailants of the past two weeks, from the rest of the city.

The violence has been stirred in part by Muslim anger over increasing Israeli incursions to Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam’s holiest site outside the Arabian Peninsula.

Palestinians have faced violence at the hands of Israeli security personnel and civillians too.

In the parking lot of an Ikea furniture store in northern Israel, a Jewish man, who police said had intended to carry out a revenge attack against Palestinians, stabbed and wounded a fellow Jew, mistaking him for an Arab.

The main Palestinian factions, including the Western-backed Fatah movement and the militant Hamas group, had declared Tuesday a “Day of Rage” across the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, accusing Israel of “escalating its crimes against our people”.

The leaders of the community ofn Palestinian citizens of Israel called for a commercial strike in their towns and villages.

The now-daily stabbings have raised speculation that Palestinians could be embarking on another uprising or intifada, reflecting a new generation’s frustrations over their veteran leadership’s failure to achieve statehood.

But in Geneva, where the Palestinians’ flag was raised at UN headquarters for the first time on Tuesday after their promotion to “non-member observer state”, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al Maliki said he did not expect a new uprising.

He said Netanyahu - who has accused Palestinian leaders of inciting violence - was seeking confrontation.

“He knows this is the only way how he is going to continue killing innocent people: by claiming there is an intifada and the Israelis are trying to defend themselves,” Maliki said.

- with inputs from Reuters