This week saw a wave of violence in the Holy Land, with deadly Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis and violent demonstrations across the West Bank and along the Gaza border.
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Eyewitnesses told Anadolu Agency that Israeli settlers killed Mohammad Qawasmi, 18, at al-Shuhada street in the occupied southern West Bank city of Hebron.
Hours after the shrine attack, a Palestinian posing as a journalist wounded an Israeli soldier with a knife before being shot dead near the West Bank town of Hebron, the Israeli military said. But a Palestinian man claimed that his daughter, a high-school student, witnessed the shooting and said it happened when Jewish settlers attacked an unarmed Palestinian.
In Hebron, 18-year-old Fadel al-Kawatsmi tried to stab a settler before his intended victim, who was unharmed, shot him dead, the army and Palestinian security sources said. Israel’s military says an Israeli pedestrian shot and wounded a Palestinian who tried to stab him.
The incident at the holy site overnight and the stabbing attacks or attempts on Saturday came after more than two weeks of relentless violence and unrest, raising fears of a full-scale Palestinian uprising.
Eight Israelis have been killed this month by Palestinian attackers using knives, firearms and vehicles.
Stone-throwing protests erupted across the West Bank and Gaza on Friday, and assailants firebombed a site revered by Jews as the tomb of biblical Joseph on a “day of rage” against Israel.
The army says the soldier was moderately wounded in the Saturday night incident.
“There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years”, Kerry said during a talk at Harvard University, adding, “you have this violence because there’s a frustration that is growing, and a frustration among Israelis who don’t see any movement”.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over the recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict late Friday.
While defending Israels right to protect its citizens, he called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to tamp down rhetoric that might feed violence.
According to Israeli authorities, Palestinian police beat at least a few of them with their batons and the butts of their guns.
The FPA has complained in the past of harassment of a few of its members by both Israeli and Palestinian forces, including cases in which reporters were beaten and equipment smashed.
Israelis thwarted a number of attempted stabbings by Palestinians on Saturday in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel has taken unprecedented steps in response to the attacks by deploying soldiers in Israeli cities and erecting concrete barriers outside a few Arab neighbourhoods of east Jerusalem.
“We are very concerned about the outbreak of violence”, president Barack Obama said in Washington.
Numerous attackers have been Palestinian youth, and a local police commander at the scene of Saturday’s attack in Jerusalem pleaded for parents to restrain them.
There have been repeated clashes at east Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam and the most sacred for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount.
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However, Palestinians believe the site belongs to a holy man from the city of Nablus.
