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Israeli soldiers kill 6 young Palestinians in Gaza

Palestinian protesters threw stones, during clashes with Israeli troops near Ramallah, West Bank, on Friday.Majdi Mohammed/Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers killed six young Palestinians on Friday in the Gaza Strip, including a 15-year-old boy, as they opened fire to quell crowds that hurled rocks and rolled burning tires close to the fence separating Gaza from Israel, Israeli military and Gaza health officials said.

The deadly clash came as the roiling violence and unrest of the past week continued across Israel and the occupied West Bank. There were four more stabbing attacks, including the first by an Israeli against Arabs, and unruly demonstrations that raged into the night.

The deteriorating landscape presented intense political challenges for both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Neither is ready to make a dramatic diplomatic move that could ease the conflict, yet the spiraling situation tests their ability to maintain control of restive constituencies.

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For Abbas, who has preached nonviolence for his entire tenure, the escalating unrest undermines his credibility with international supporters and benefits his more militant rivals, like the Hamas Islamists, who have egged on the attackers.

For Netanyahu, who has made fighting terrorism the centerpiece of his political life and is still reeling from his failure to stop the Iran nuclear deal, the crisis has exacerbated tensions in his narrow, conservative coalition and left many Israelis asking why he cannot keep their streets safe.

“This upsurge represents a rejection of Abbas’s entire strategy that he’s been working on for most of his adult life,” observed Nathan Thrall, an analyst for the International Crisis Group in Jerusalem.

He also said the escalation “looks bad for Israel’s image in the world — you see Palestinian protesters against an occupying army,” especially as Netanyahu prepares to meet with President Obama in a few weeks to repair their tattered relations.

“You are essentially creating new pressure on moving on the Palestinian issue at a time when he is hoping to have a nice, quiet meeting in Washington where they’re compensating him for the Iran deal,” he explained, “and instead he’s going to also have to talk about what he’s going to do to lower the flames.”

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Friday was the first time since the latest outbreak began that it spread to the Gaza Strip, after a Facebook page called “Third Intifada” called for people to “prepare your stones, knives and Molotovs” and “head towards” the Israeli military site outside the kibbutz Nahal Oz.

“We will not be silent in front of all [that’s] happening in the other half of our homeland,” said Fouad Safwat, 26, one of the demonstrators. As the Palestinians rushed toward the barrier separating Gaza from Israel, he said, “the whole area suddenly turned into a real confrontation.” He added, “It was a real intifada.”

Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said there were more than 1,000 men “attempting multiple times and at multiple locations to storm the border fence throughout the day,” hurling projectiles including a grenade.

“Only after firing warning shots in the air did we fire at the main instigators, to get them to stop,” he said.

Four Palestinians were killed there and two others were shot to death farther south, near Khan Younis, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza. He said 80 people had been injured, at least 11 of them minors, and many shot in the head, neck, and chest.

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Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza, urged people to join in the expanding confrontation with Israel during his sermon Friday.

“Gaza is ready to fight in the battle of Jerusalem,” he said. “The battle of Jerusalem is our battle, and we will not relent to always be in the right place.”

In Israel, after there were seven separate stabbings by Palestinians on Wednesday and Thursday, Friday morning began with a familiar burst of staccato bulletins on a police WhatsApp message group for reporters: A man in the southern city of Dimona attacked a municipal worker, then three others, with a knife and a screwdriver and was arrested.

But this time, the accused assailant was a Jewish resident of the city known to the police, and his victims a Bedouin citizen of Israel and three Palestinians from the West Bank.