Jerusalem pet-shop supplier Tai Nizar picked up a 9-millimetre semi-automatic pistol, weighing it in his hand.  

At just 620 grams, it was light and compact and sat comfortably in his palm. 

Mr Nizar, a Jewish Israeli, was shopping for a gun smaller and more easily concealed than his current weapon, so he could defend himself against a new wave of violence in the region. 

He pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes and squeezed the trigger. 

Five shots rang out, piercing through a paper target hung in front of a rocky hill, at the sprawling Caliber 3 counterterrorism and security academy in the Israeli settlement of Gush Etzion in the occupied West Bank. 

"A bigger weapon can be a target," he said. 

"If someone sees a bump [under my jacket], they know you might have a weapon, you might get attacked first." 

Mr Nizar, a licensed gun owner, lives in Jerusalem but travels across Israel and the West Bank for his work. 

He is among a rising number of Israelis investing in a new weapon under the urging of the Israeli government, after the worst year of bloodshed in the region in more than a decade. 

"I have to be armed for my protection, for my environment's protection," he said.  

"If I see a terror attack, I can stop it immediately." 

A year of bloodshed

According to the United Nations, seven Israelis and more than 40 Palestinians have been killed in the past month, following a year of spiralling violence involving a spate of Palestinian attacks and near-nightly Israeli military raids in the West Bank. 

The violence reached a new peak less than a fortnight ago, when a 21-year-old Palestinian man shot dead seven people outside a synagogue in a settlement in East Jerusalem on Holocaust Memorial Day.

The next day, two people were wounded near the Old City in Jerusalem in a shooting blamed by Israeli authorities on a 13-year-old boy, who now lies unconscious in hospital. 

The synagogue attack came just 24 hours after 10 Palestinians were killed during a shootout in an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin. 

The dead Palestinians included mostly armed militants and at least two civilians. 

In response to the wave of attacks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new hard-right  Israeli government has pledged to arm thousands more Israeli civilians to be a first line of defence. 

Each day, more than 400 people come to the Caliber 3 counter-terrorism facility to train in weapons handling, tactical combat and self-defence. 

The customers include soldiers, government workers and a rising number of civilians, like Mr Nizar, who are flocking to buy handguns, according to the academy's vice-president Itzik Fuchs. 

"People want to be more protected," Mr Fuchs told the ABC. 

"In the past year, with more of the attacks we had in different places, we have a lot of requests of people that want to apply for a licence for weapons … so that when they walk in the street, they can be more secure." 

The plan to make it easier for trained Israelis to obtain gun licences is spearheaded by Israel's new National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right extremist whose Jewish Power party is part of the coalition that recently formed the most right-wing government in Israel's history. 

Mr Ben-Gvir was previously convicted of supporting a terrorism group and inciting racism against Arabs, and banned from conscription into the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) because he was deemed too dangerous.

He has disavowed some of his past conduct and said that in cabinet, he would serve all of society.

His wife Ayala Ben-Gvir, a proudly gun-toting Israeli settler in the West Bank, was among the civilians at the Caliber 3 gun store when the ABC visited last week. 

She was there for a lesson in cleaning her gun — a task she likened to a trivial fact of life. 

But with both Israeli settlers and Palestinian assailants involved in rising violence, critics fear a new Wild West mentality is taking hold.

Why was 16yo Jana killed? 

The formation of the new Israeli government a month ago has sent fresh panic and anger through the occupied West Bank, which is already reeling from a dramatic and violent surge in Israeli army operations.

Last year, Israeli forces killed at least 146 Palestinians, including militants and civilians — the highest number since the United Nations began systematically recording fatalities in 2005.

Israel says its forces are responding to a rising number of fatal attacks in Israel by Palestinians, which left 31 people dead last year in a wave of brutality not seen in more than a decade. 

Palestinian authorities and rights groups say they're being subjected to "collective punishment".

The collateral damage is severe. At least 34 Palestinian children were among those killed by Israeli forces last year, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

While Israel says some of them were armed militants, others were caught in the crossfire. 

One of those children, 16-year-old girl Jana Zakarneh, was shot in the head last December when an Israeli army raid sparked a clash in the West Bank city of Jenin.

An Israeli sniper shot Jana Zakarneh four times in the head and upper body while she was on the roof of her house. 

A day later, the IDF said an "initial inquiry" found she was "hit by unintentional fire aimed at armed gunmen on a roof in the area from which the force was fired upon". 

However, the IDF also claimed Jana was on the roof while keeping lookout for local gunmen during the military raid.

It has provided no evidence for that allegation. 

Her family found her in a pool of blood on their rooftop. They reject the IDF's finding that the shooting was unintentional and say she was not keeping an eye out for militants. 

Her father, Majdi Isam Saeed Assaf, tells the ABC he now barely sleeps as he mourns his daughter, who he describes as a keen student who left school to care for her severely ill mother. 

"I didn't realise what had happened," he said. 

"It was only when I lifted her head that my hand went through her head and I realised. 

"They fired at her all over. 

"They could see her. They could see she was a girl. Snipers can see precisely. They knew quite well she was a girl. She was playing up there for over an hour." 

Mr Assaf said she was on the rooftop to play with her cat. 

The IDF said a drone filmed the incident, but did not respond to the ABC's request to release the vision. 

In its statement a day after the death, the IDF said, "the claim that security forces purposefully fired at uninvolved civilians is implausible and without foundation".

It said it was continuing to investigate the death and "regret[ted] any harm to uninvolved civilians". 

A new generation joins the fight

The surge in military search-and-arrest raids in cities like Jenin in the West Bank is driving a new generation of militants to seek payback. 

Jenin and the city of Nablus have become hotbeds for armed militants who are revered openly on the streets, as the crisis-gripped Palestinian Authority loses control of those cities. 

The streets of Jenin are festooned with banners, posters and signs bearing the faces of so-called martyrs, who have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers. 

Their deaths are celebrated in pictures hanging on the necklaces of local girls and women, and plastered on scooters around town. 

The city's residents are urged to take up arms by powerful militants like the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades, which is designated a terrorist organisation by the US, European Union and Australia. 

"We are driven to defend ourselves all the time and keep what's left of our land," said Al Aqsa Brigades spokesman Deyaa abu Waad, in an interview with the ABC. 

"We urge our brothers to take to the streets and start a new Intifada for the rights of the Palestinians. 

"We've had enough of this waste of time from the UN that pretends to sort out peacefully our situation and we've seen nothing for the last 25 years." 

With the peace process stalled for nearly a decade, a generation that has grown up under occupation is heeding that brutal message and taking up arms. 

As critics fear a new era of vigilantism on both sides, the US Government is calling for a de-escalation of the violence. 

The United Nations envoy in Jerusalem, Tor Wennesland, has meanwhile called for the global community to reverse declining international support for the Palestinian Authority (PA), so it can have the resources to regain control of Jenin and Nablus. 

Many Palestinians are now deeply disillusioned with the peace process and fear the violence will only escalate.

Majdi Isam Saeed Assaf, the father of Jana Zakarneh, now fears for the future of his only remaining child. 

"The world is sleeping. They do nothing. They are in denial."