Mayor of Jerusalem vows to calm city

Associated Press

JERUSALEM

Jerusalem’s mayor Thursday called for a crackdown against a wave of Palestinian unrest, as police beefed up security after a Palestinian motorist with a history of anti-Israel violence slammed his car into a crowded light-rail train station and killed a baby girl.

The crash Wednesday night escalated already heightened tensions in east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city captured by Israel in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians as their capital.

Since the summer, Palestinian youths have clashed frequently with Israeli police, thrown stones and firebombs at Israeli motorists and disrupted service of the city’s light rail train — a service meant to unify the city.

In an interview, Mayor Nir Barkat said the violence has become intolerable, and he vowed to restore order.

“Yesterday what we saw is another higher level, of people running over a 3-month-old baby,” he told The Associated Press. “We must fight violence, and we will win that war.”

Barkat has a particularly sensitive job, presiding over a diverse city that includes secular and observant Jews, an insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and more than 200,000 Palestinians. It is a cauldron of conflicting interest groups that frequently boils over into unrest.

The latest unrest has created perhaps the biggest crisis for Barkat, a former high-tech entrepreneur, during his six years in office.