Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, on a visit to Israel, expressed concerns on Thursday about Jewish settler violence against Palestinians and warned against acts that could trigger more insecurity.
The US defence secretary held talks in Israel as flaring violence killed three suspected Palestinian militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and protesters rallied against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government.
Late Thursday, a gunman shot and wounded three people on a Tel Aviv street in what police said could be a "terrorist attack".
Austin said, in a joint news conference with Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant, that the US commitment to Israel's security was "iron-clad".
But the US remained "firmly opposed to any acts that could trigger more insecurity, including settlement expansion and inflammatory rhetoric," he said, adding: "We are especially disturbed by violence by settlers against Palestinians."
Thousands of Israelis opposed to the Netanyahu government's legal reform plans had blocked roads in and around Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv, forcing a last-minute change of venue for Austin's talks.
Just hours before his arrival, undercover agents of Israel's border police shot dead three suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
And hours after his press conference with Galant, the shooting occurred on a popular street in Tel Aviv, leaving one of the wounded in a critical condition, emergency services said.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said a police officer "eliminated the heinous terrorist and saved many lives".
The dead gunman was widely identified online and in Israeli media as Motaz Khawajah.
Contacted by AFP, Salah Khawajah, from the Palestinian town of Nilin near Ramallah in the West Bank, said his son Motaz, a 23-year-old Hamas sympathiser, had made a "normal reaction for any young person who sees injustice by the Israeli army every day".
Austin had reported "a very frank and candid discussion among friends about the need to de-escalate, to lower tensions and restore calm especially before the holidays of Passover and Ramadan".
He also called on the "Palestinian leadership to combat terrorism and to resume security cooperation and to condemn incitement".
In their meetings with Austin, Netanyahu and his defence minister raised concerns that Israel's arch-foe Iran is developing nuclear weapons, something the Islamic republic has always denied.
AP adds from Jerusalem: A Palestinian man who entered a settlement in the occupied West Bank armed with knives and explosive devices was shot and killed by an Israeli settler on Friday, the Israeli military said, just hours after a Palestinian gunman shot and wounded Israelis in downtown Tel Aviv.
The new violence was the latest to grip Israel and the West Bank in one of the deadliest periods of unrest among Israelis and Palestinians in years.
The Israeli military said the armed Palestinian slipped into a farm near the settlement of Karnei Shomron, in the northern West Bank, and was fatally shot by an Israeli settler overseeing the land. Palestinian authorities identified the man as 21-year-old Abed al-Sheikh. His father, Badaie al-Sheikh, said Israeli security forces searched his house, interrogated him and confiscated his son's phone in the nearby Palestinian village of Saniriya.
Hours earlier, Israeli security forces entered the Palestinian village of Naalin and prepared to demolish the family house of the Palestinian suspected of carrying out the shooting in Tel Aviv on Thursday night. The shooter had opened fire near Dizengoff Street in a bustling area of Tel Aviv’s city center and wounded three Israelis, including one critically.
Hamas group claimed the attacker, a 23-year-old former prisoner named Moataz Khawaja, as a member of the organization’s armed wing. Hamas said the shooting came in response to an Israeli military arrest raid that day that killed three gunmen in the northern village of Jaba, along with another raid earlier this week that killed seven Palestinians in the flashpoint Jenin refugee camp, including a wanted assailant and a 14-year-old boy.
“We promise more painful strikes throughout our occupied land as long as (Israel's) aggression continues and its crimes escalate,” the Palestinian group said.
Israeli police said Friday they were continuing their investigation into the attack, and that two men from the Israeli town of Ramle, near Tel Aviv, and the Bedouin town of Kuseife, in the Negev desert, had turned themselves in over their alleged smuggling of the gunman and other Palestinians from the occupied West Bank into Israel.
As Israeli forces stormed into Naalin and arrested two family members of the suspected attacker for questioning, they said they were met by a barrage of explosive devices, Molotov cocktails and stones. Israeli troops responded with gunfire, which they said struck at least one Palestinian. The person's condition was unclear.
Before being arrested, Khawaja's father, Salah Khawaja, said he felt pride in his son for carrying out the attack. Like many Palestinians living in an environment where attacks on Israelis are celebrated and their perpetrators exalted, he expressed little sympathy for Israeli civilians and said he understood his son's desire for revenge.
“Praise God, Moataz is beloved by everyone,” he told reporters. “Any young man who witnesses such massacres will naturally respond.”
Further north, Israeli forces entered the Palestinian city of Tulkarm, home to an emerging armed group that has increasingly attracted young Palestinians angry at Israeli violence and disillusioned by their leadership. Gunmen opened fire, striking an Israeli military vehicle in the city, the army said. Others hurled explosive devices and shot at Israeli forces from a passing car. The Israeli army said it responded with live fire. There were no immediate reports of casualties on either side.
The past few months have been marked by rising violence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which Israel captured along with the Gaza strip in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek them for a future independent state.
At least 75 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire during military arrest raids and other confrontations so far this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Over that same period, a series of attacks by Palestinians against Israelis has left at least 14 Israelis dead so far this year, all but one of them civilians.
The upsurge in deaths has raised fears of a possible greater escalation under Israel's most right-wing government in history, which has pledged tough action against the Palestinians.
