Heavy security, Israelis arm themselves after more knife attacks

Israeli security forces deployed massively in Jerusalem Thursday as Jews armed themselves with everything from guns to broomsticks, rattled by a wave of Palestinian attacks that have shaken the country.

 Some 300 soldiers were reinforcing police, stretched thin by a two-week upsurge in violence that has raised fears that a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising, might erupt.

 They are due to be in place by Sunday, while conscripts wearing fluorescent vests marked "police" could already be seen guarding Tel Aviv's bus station.

 The last time soldiers deployed in such large numbers was in 2002, during the second intifada, according to a security source.

 And at stops along the highway between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Hebron, a major junction to other points in the occupied territory, border police were boarding and searching every bus.

 In addition to the attacks, violent protests have rocked annexed east Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

 Seven Israelis have been killed and dozens wounded.

 At least 30 Palestinians have also died, including alleged attackers, and hundreds more been wounded in clashes with Israeli forces.

 In the first two intifadas, in 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, hundreds of people were killed and many more hurt in near daily violence.

 Israel's best-selling newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, was full of photos Thursday of Jews arming themselves with even broomsticks and rolling pins, as gun sellers said demand had skyrocketed.

 But other stores are suffering, with shoppers staying off the streets.

 "Business is at 15 percent of normal," said Aron Silverberg, who runs a cellphone shop in central Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market.

 With fear spreading among Jews, police said soldiers on a train near the northern port of Haifa saw someone they considered suspect and began to shout "terrorist".

 An officer sitting in the front carriage fired a single shot in the air and someone later pulled the emergency brake. No suspect was found and no one was hurt.

 "There is really a wave of terror," Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon told army radio.

 He said "civilians are in the front line, at very short range as a consequence of the fact that the main weapon is the knife, occasionally also firearms."