The U.S. ambassador to Israel criticized Monday Israel’s settlement building in the West Bank, charging it raises concerns about Israel’s intentions of achieving peace with the Palestinians.
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Following the attack in the settlement of Otniel, south of the West Bank city of Hebron, Israeli troops sealed off the area and intensive intelligence work, using local contacts and electronic surveillance, led troops to the local Palestinian village of Yatta, some three kilometres from the attack.
The U.S. ambassador to Israel on Monday publicly suggested that the Netanyahu government is not genuinely committed to a two-state solution and that Israel holds Palestinians and Jews in the West Bank to separate legal standards.
Israel on Tuesday arrested a Palestinian teen accused of stabbing a Jewish woman to death in the occupied West Bank and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to demolish his home after the attack provoked Israeli outrage.
Over at Channel News Asia a background on the stabbing and its victims sheds some lights on the United States ambassador’s comments and Israel’s subsequent reaction. Israeli politicians and settlers armed with assault rifles joined her grieving children at the graveside. Her injuries were not considered life-threatening.
Her husband sat in the front row sobbing with two of their children in his lap.
“One hour before everything happened, we were still discussing what nail polish I should wear”, their 17-year-old daughter Renana said at the funeral.
The Prime Minister, in response to the stabbings, has strengthened security measures and said: “Whoever tries to harm us, we will bring him to justice”.
Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip territories in the 1967 Mideast War.
The stab attack comes after some four months of escalations, where IOF killed 163 Palestinians, and injured dozens of thousands during protests or on checkpoints.
WAFA said Abbas explained the latest developments in the political arena and the Israeli violations against the Palestinian people to the delegation.
The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, taking nearly a third of all Israeli exports in 2014 according to EU figures, but Israel claimed that the decision to label settlement products was motivated by campaigns to boycott Israeli businesses.
He spoke on Monday at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies, a top Israeli think tank. Army strategists expect Iran to observe the terms of the nuclear agreement for several years while increasing its support for Lebanese and Palestinian groups fighting Israel, he said.
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At least 116 of these were killed “in cold blood”, the ministry says, while the bodies of 10 slain Palestinians are still being held by Israel.
