In the past five weeks, 10 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, while 50 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including 29 said by Israel to be attackers and the rest in clashes.
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The current round of violence began last month with clashes at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, a hilltop compound in the Old City that is revered by Jews and Muslims.
During riots at the compound in September, Palestinian protesters barricaded themselves in the mosque in a bid to disrupt morning visits by Jews to the site.
Addressing his Cabinet on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he “made clear” to Kerry that Israel is committed to preserving the status quo, and he welcomed the plan to install cameras.
The club said that more than 6,000 Palestinians are now imprisoned by Israel, 420 of them in administrative detention.
Now cameras film the outside plaza of the compound, but not the inside of holy monuments on the site, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said on public radio. First, in order to disprove the claim that Israel is changing the status quo. “Secondly, to show where the provocations are really coming from, and prevent them in advance”, said Netanyahu.
Israeli police said they fatally shot a knife-wielding Palestinian woman at a border checkpoint Sunday, but a Palestinian witness disputed that she was armed, saying she was a “terrified” schoolgirl.
“Final arrangements for the manner and location of the cameras on the Temple Mount, which was agreed upon between Israel, Jordan and the United States, were meant to be coordinated by the professional elements”, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
“There will not be calm without political prospects to definitively end the occupation”, said Nabila Sheath, an official from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’ West Bank-based Fatah.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday announced an agreement between Israel and Jordan, including the video monitoring, that are meant to put an end to a monthlong outburst of violence.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh had said that technical teams from both sides would meet to work out the details of the new measures. The clashes quickly spread to other areas of east Jerusalem, across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Two Israelis were stabbed and wounded in separate events in the West Bank.
Also on Monday Netanyahu has raised the possibility of revoking benefits and travel rights of a few Palestinians living in East Jerusalem in response to a wave of Palestinian violence, a government official said on Monday.
In the latest in a wave of knife attacks by Palestinians, a 19-year-old Israeli was stabbed in the neck and severely wounded while his attacker was shot dead, the army said. An Israeli Arab attacker has also been killed.
“A Palestinian woman acting suspiciously approached border police forces”.
“They asked her to identify herself and she suddenly took out a knife, started to approach them while shouting at them”.
“The woman aroused the suspicion of border police at a checkpoint beside the Cave of the Patriarchs (known to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque) in the West Bank city of Hebron, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said”.
Raed Abu Rmileh posted a video on YouTube which shows the body of a woman clad in black lying on the ground surrounded by uniformed officers, her white headscarf covered in blood.
Meanwhile Palestinian police sources said a 20-year-old man was in serious condition after being “shot by a settler while harvesting olives in Sair”, nearby where the Israeli was stabbed in the West Bank.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said the step, if adopted, would deprive Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem of the most basic rights and services and provoke confrontations.
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The conflicting claims to the hilltop mount lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have spilled over into violence in the past. One Israeli Jew and one Eritrean have been killed after being mistaken for attackers.
