Israeli media reported Israeli forces shot a Palestinian woman after she allegedly attempted to stab a soldier near the Anabta town, east of Tulkarem.
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France is hoping to re-launch talks between Israelis and Palestinians by the end of the year.
Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, posted on Twitter that Harasha had a knife and “tried to stab” a soldier. Foqoha added that Red Crescent staff saw the woman lying on the ground before being taken inside an Israeli ambulance, which stayed on the scene.
However, the managing director of Israel’s foreign ministry, Dore Gold, likened the French talks to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, which carved up the Middle East between colonial powers, and said only direct talks could resolve the conflict.
The paper deplored the appointment of Avigdor Liberman as defense minister, describing him as a “hard-line nationalist with an abysmal global reputation”, not calculated to advance the cause of peace.
At least 213 Palestinians, including children and women, have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces in what is regarded as the third Palestinian Intifada (uprising) since the beginning of last October.
“What France is organising is not a regional conference it’s an worldwide conference”, he said.
Under that proposal, Arab leaders said they would recognise the state of Israel in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied since 1967, and the creation of a Palestinian state.
Some analysts saw Netanyahu’s comments as a means of fending off his global critics and perhaps scuttling the French initiative by proposing an alternative.
In talks Thursday with visiting Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini Netanyahu told his guest that the French initiative gave Abbas an opportunity to evade direct negotiations, an Israeli government statement said.
Others however said that his remarks represented a real opportunity, whatever his motivation.
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Various worldwide, Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations have slammed Israel’s policy of “extrajudicial killings” against Palestinians.
