JERUSALEM — The Israeli authorities began setting up roadblocks and checkpoints in some Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem on Wednesday and deployed hundreds of police officers and soldiers on the roads and buses, a response to what the government called a "wave of terrorism."
Seven Israeli Jews have been killed this month by Palestinian assailants, including three on Tuesday in Jerusalem: Two in an attack on a bus at the juncture of Jewish and Arab areas, and one pedestrian in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood who was rammed by a vehicle and then hit with a meat cleaver.
An estimated 30 Palestinians — several of them attackers killed by the authorities — have died in the violence, most of it centered around Jerusalem.
After an emergency cabinet meeting Tuesday night, the government directed the police "to impose a closure on, or to surround, centers of friction and incitement in Jerusalem, in accordance with security considerations" and authorized the deployment of 300 security guards to patrol public transportation.
The public security minister, Gilad Erdan, approved steps Wednesday that would make it easier for civilians to obtain a gun permit. Several Israelis, he said, had helped the police halt terrorists.
In Jabel Mukaber, a vast Palestinian neighborhood of windy, hilly roads in East Jerusalem, where the two bus attackers on Tuesday were from, the police closed one of three entrances to the community. Another was half-closed; some residents were stopped for questioning but others were waved through.
"More than 50,000 people live here, and they are punishing the entire village," complained a man who asked to be identified by his nickname, Abu Anas, and who said he was trying to take his teenage son to a health clinic. "This is a racist decision and will only bring about more violence in their neighborhoods."
The new security measures are an effort to halt a series of seemingly spontaneous acts by young people unconnected with any formal political movement, but many observers expressed alarm that the situation threatened to spiral into a third intifada, or uprising. But in the daily newspaper Maariv, the columnist Ben Caspit, a frequent critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the Israeli leader was "dividing Jerusalem" and that the "partial blockade" on Arab neighborhoods "will not last, and certainly will not stop stabbers."
Another journalist, Alon Ben-David, wrote in the newspaper Yediot Aharonot that "the last remnants of the illusion of the unified Jerusalem are being erased."
He added: "It is true that the absolute majority, perhaps even 99 percent, of the Palestinian population is not participating in the current confrontation, but a few dozen terrorists are enough to unravel the last seams of the coexistence illusion."
In the same newspaper, the military-affairs columnist Alex Fishman warned, "This terrorism by individuals could become civil war: Jews against Arabs."
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the new Israeli actions were "dangerous" and would only escalate the tensions. "East Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine," he declared on Voice of Palestine radio. "If they think that they can reach security with these measures, they are wrong. The Palestinian people will continue to defend themselves. We don't have an army and no one can compare between us and the Israeli army, but we will defend ourselves with all what is available."
Israeli officials defended the measures as proportionate and necessary.
"Firstly, the goal is to calm people," Interior Minister Silvan Shalom, who is from Netanyahu's Likud Party, said on Israeli radio. "After that, maybe to take more in-depth steps. You can't, right this minute, take steps without first making plans, without preparation and training."
He promised that "those neighborhoods that were not involved will not be affected," but added that "there will also be punitive measures that will be very dramatic" for those responsible for the violence.
Shalom blamed the Palestinians for abetting the violence. "There is no reason for a 13-year-old boy to take up a knife and commit such an act," he said. "It's only because he was instilled with hatred from kindergarten to school age. They are told that Jews have no right to live here, or any right to live at all. And this incitement has to stop."