Border Policemen arrested a Palestinian man in possession of a knife in the West Bank city of Hebron on Friday morning.

The 26-year-old Hebron resident was detained outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews and Muslims, and was suspected of planning to attack Israeli security forces.

The Palestinian had approached an Israeli checkpoint and did not respond to calls from police to stop. Israeli forces subsequently arrested him and found he was concealing a knife on his body, according to the police.

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Upon his arrest, the would-be assailant said he planned to attack Israeli troops, the police said.

The West Bank city has been a flashpoint in the wave of violence wracking Israel since October of last year.

This past week saw an uptick in violence throughout Israel and the West Bank after weeks of relative calm.

On Monday night, an ultra-Orthodox man in his 60s was moderately wounded in a stabbing attack at Lions’ Gate, outside Jerusalem’s Old City. On Tuesday, three Israel Defense Forces soldiers were injured, one seriously, in a car-ramming attack near the West Bank settlement of Dolev. And Wednesday, a teenage Arab girl was arrested in the Old City in possession of a knife.

The calm had been previously shattered by an April 18 bus bombing, in which a Palestinian resident of Bethlehem blew himself up in Jerusalem, injuring 20 people and killing himself. Israel said the attacker was a Hamas member. Although the terror group praised the attack, it avoided claiming responsibility.

Last month, Israeli officials had pointed to a marked decrease in Palestinian stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks in and around Jerusalem, following six months of near-daily assaults throughout Israel and the West Bank.

Twenty-nine Israelis and four others have been killed in the recent wave of terror attacks. Some 200 Palestinians have also been killed, some two-thirds of them while attacking Israelis, and the rest during clashes with troops, according to the Israeli army.