Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu adamantly defended Israel's rights to defend itself in the face of violence, after holding a meeting with top security officials. 

"We can by using the legitimate means which are available to any country," Netanyahu said. "When people try to stab other people to death, when people have stabbed other people to death, or shoot them to death - innocent people are shot, stabbed, men, women, children [...] I visited a hospital yesterday, a little child, two and a half years old, shot by a terrorist trying to kill him, his mother lying there, stabbed, her husband, dead, murdered by the terrorists - we have every right to take action to prevent that." 

"We're using additional security forces, they have clear instructions to act against any danger to life, to their own and to innocent people, and we're taking other steps."

"Unfortunately a lot of this goes back to the incitement from Hamas, from the Palestinian Authority, from Islamists who live within Israel itself, which have spread a lot, saying that Israel wants to change the status quo on the Temple Mount, Israel wants to hurt holy sites of Islam - we're the guarantors of the sacred sites of Islam!" he continued.

"We're the reason why the sacred sites of Islam, the sites of Christianity, the sites of Judaism, do not look like Palmyra!" he fired back, referring to the ancient Syrian city conquered and sacked by ISIS.

"Israel is acting firmly, responsibly, against terrorists, against zealots, who murder innocent people," he concluded. "We're doing what any country would do under such circumstances." 

Netanyahu spoke after meeting with Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkott, and other security officials at the Shomron (Samaria) Brigade base north of Tapuach junction.