Even a cigarette is now a problem, said traders in the alleyways of the Old City, who were fined by newly zealous inspectors enforcing a ban on indoor smoking.

“It’s the pinnacle of frustration,” Amjad Ghrouf, a 42-year-old Palestinian trader, said with a sigh as he secretly puffed on a cigarette inside a sweet shop. “It’s just to screw with us,” muttered his friend, who kept watch by the doorway.

Since the uprising began in October, Palestinians have killed 18 Israelis and an American citizen. More than 115 Palestinians have been killed in the same period.

According to estimates from Israeli officials and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 60 Palestinians have been shot dead while attacking Israelis, or being suspected of doing so, from Oct. 1 through early December, with 12 of the attackers thought to have come from East Jerusalem. All but two of those attacks were in the first three weeks of October. And while attacks were quite common in Jerusalem that month, they now account for less than a fifth of the estimated 135 attacks of this uprising.

That is not to say attacks have ceased in Jerusalem. On Monday, a Palestinian man rammed his car into a crowd of Israelis at a bus stop, injuring a dozen people, including an 18-month-old baby. On Wednesday, two men tried to plow their vehicle into Israeli security forces conducting a raid in the Kalandia refugee camp.

Quelling the uprising in East Jerusalem was particularly important for Israeli officials, who claim the city as their eternal, undivided capital, and who have sought to project an image of business as usual in the city.

For Israel, violence by Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem is particularly troubling, because they may freely move about the West Bank and in Israel, in contrast to Palestinians in the West Bank, who need permits to enter Israeli-controlled areas.