“We expect our friends not to build false symmetries between Israeli citizens and those that stab them to death, ” Netanyahu said in a press conference on the attacks in Israel in recent days. Obviously, the Israelis trying to make a point that they’re going to punish people in those areas where those attackers came from.
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The fresh tension has escalated after Palestinians have been angered by events at the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s walled Old City who fear Israel wants to change the status quo at Islam’s third holiest shrine, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount.
The meeting, which diplomats said was called at the request of council member Jordan, will include a briefing from the U.N. secretariat on the situation on the ground and will take place at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), the United Nations said on Thursday.
In Israel, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, condemning remarks made by Mr. Abbas in which he blamed Israel for the escalation in violence between Israelis and Palestinians in recent weeks.
Last Friday, Ismail Haniyeh, a leading member of resistance movement Hamas, warned that Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem were “rising up” against the Israeli occupation. Palestinians also believe Israel has deliberately sabotaged the long-scuttled peace process in order to have a free hand to continue enlarging Jewish settlements in the West Bank and housing more Jews in east Jerusalem.
Five separate attacks that left three Israelis dead and dozens of others wounded.
Responding to Abbas’s address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his statements “incitement and lies”.
However, later in the day, two attacks were reported in Jerusalem, with an Israeli woman injured and two Palestinians shot dead by Israeli security forces.
In the past month, eight Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks, majority stabbings.
Israeli police said that Ahmed Manasra and his 15-year-old cousin stabbed two Israelis, one of whom was also a 13-year-old boy, in Jerusalem on Monday.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon accused Washington of “misreading” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and he said shooting knife-wielding Palestinians was self-defense.
Israel set up roadblocks in Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem and deployed soldiers across the country on Wednesday in an effort to stop a wave of Palestinian knife attacks.
Despite the heightened security measures, there were two more stabbing incidents on Wednesday, and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police in the West Bank city of Bethlehem and along the Israeli border with Gaza continued into Thursday.
Ban has urged Israel to carry out a “serious review” of whether its security forces are resorting to excessive force in clashes with Palestinians.
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The Palestinian Authority Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs meanwhile said Saturday that Israeli forces have detained up to 650 Palestinians since the beginning of October, a lot of them younger than 20 years old.
