Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the man attacked the soldier after getting off a bus in the city of Kiryat Gat. The man then fled into a residential building, where police forces tracked him down and shot him.

Rosenfeld said the suspect's identity was not yet clear but that police were treating the incident as a “terrorist attack.”

Hours before that attack, a Palestinian teenager stabbed an Israeli man in occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli police said. The assailant was shot and wounded by the injured man. Police said the attack happened in an alleyway near the Western Wall, a Jewish prayer site abutting the Aqsa complex. The man was reportedly only lightly injured, and the teen is in serious condition.

Witnesses to the attack, however, dispute police claims that the teenager was armed and stabbed the man, according to Ma'an.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have sought to calm the recent surge in protests, clashes and street violence. However, Netanyahu has vowed to quell protests with a “harsh hand.”

“We will act with a very harsh hand against terrorism and also against incitement,” the prime minister said in a televised statement on Monday. “We will not give any rioter or any inciter immunity in any place, and so there are no limitations of the actions of the defense forces.”

Several thousand Israeli right-wing protesters, accompanied by lawmakers, gathered in front of Netanyahu’s residence on Monday evening, demanding a strong response to Palestinian unrest.

"If a terrorist decides to throw a stone, you need to deport him and all his family, to destroy his house and his family’s house, to take his citizenship. You need to hurt them," Oren Hazan, a lawmaker from Netanyahu's Likud party, told Agence France-Press at the rally.

Sending a message to potential Palestinian attackers, Israel razed homes on Tuesday in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal Al-Mukabbir belonging to the families of two Palestinians accused of attacking Israelis last year. Collectively punishing a family for a crime that one of its members committed is illegal under international law.

Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas convened an emergency meeting in the West Bank on Monday to discuss the deteriorating situation. However, it’s not clear what actions, if any, were decided at that meeting, and the protests and clashes have continued unabated.

Al Jazeera and wire services