A PALESTINIAN employee stabbed two guests at a hotel outside Jerusalem today in what Israeli police described as a militant attack, the second in the area this week.

According to police, the employee came out of the kitchen at a hotel in the bucolic Kibbutz Tzuba and stabbed two of the guests in the dining room.

An off-duty police officer and the hotel’s dining manager tackled the attacker until more officers arrived and arrested him.

Israeli paramedics said they evacuated two men, aged approximately 50 and 25, to a nearby hospital. They said both had been stabbed in their torsos, the older man left in critical condition.

Israeli police said the attacker was from the Shuafat area in East Jerusalem, and that three other suspects were also arrested on suspicion they were involved in the attack.

Meanwhile, thousands of Israeli reservists are refusing to accept their call-up by authorities to take part in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, it was reported today.

The defiance is emerging as Israelis have joined mass protests accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war for political purposes instead of reaching a deal with Hamas to bring back the remaining 48 hostages.

A group known as Soldiers for Hostages says it represents more than 360 soldiers who refuse to serve. While the number remains small, it is a contrast from the early days of the war, when reservists rushed for duty in the wake of the October 7 attack.

Such refusal is punishable by imprisonment, but that has only happened in a handful of cases.

Max Kresch, a member of the group, said: “Netanyahu’s ongoing war of aggression needlessly puts our own hostages in danger and has wreaked havoc on the fabric of Israeli society, while at the same time killing, maiming and starving an entire population” of civilians in Gaza.

Israel’s call-up of 60,000 reservists is the largest in months, in a country of fewer than 10 million people where military service is mandatory for most Jewish men.

The military does not provide figures on absences or refusals but said: “The contribution of the reservists is essential to the success of missions and to maintaining the security of the country.”

A recent poll found that around two-thirds of Israelis, including about 60 per cent of Israeli Jews, think Israel should agree to a deal that includes the release of all the hostages, the cessation of hostilities and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.