An Israeli man stabbed a fellow Jew by mistake, in apparent revenge for the recent spate of Palestinian-on-Israeli stabbings.
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A Palestinian farmer and English human rights defender have been hospitalized and at least 40 olive trees burnt following an attack by illegal Israeli settlers in the northern West Bank town of Burin today.
The United Nations Security Council is set to meet Friday over the unrest. Footage on local media shows flames leaping from the small stone structure in the West Bank city of Nablus. These incidents have taken place amid a series of near-daily attacks carried out by Palestinians that have led to the deaths of seven Israelis in the past two weeks.
Fire broke out overnight at the compound housing Joseph’s Tomb, a religious site venerated by Jews, the Israel Defense Forces said Friday. The violence comes at a time when a possible partition of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into two states – Palestine alongside Israel – is fading fast.
Abbas on Friday condemned the Nablus arson as “irresponsible”, ordered an investigation into who was behind it and said repairs would begin immediately, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA. Others are applying for permits.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN David Roet lashed out at Mansour, saying that the Israelis “fear for the lives of their children every time they walk out of their door”. “We’ve urged Israelis to be vigilant”. Israel’s military says an Israeli pedestrian shot and wounded a Palestinian who tried to stab him. Abbas, the Palestinian President, accused Israel of committing what he called “extrajudicial executions”.
MEE contributor Ala Qandil in Gaza said that it was too unsafe to reach the Erez border crossing where two protestors were shot dead and many more injured by Israeli police after the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements called for a “day of rage”.
Those have since been buried by the second intifada, in which organized deadly attacks targeted Israelis from 2000 to 2005, and three wars in Gaza that killed thousands of Palestinians.
Both US Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama have made such calls in recent days.
Tensions over the site are partially behind the latest flare-up in violence, with Muslims insisting that right-wing Israelis are trying to alter the status quo at the site and eventually divide worshiping rights, similar to the system now in place in Hebron, where Muslims and Jews are allotted different prayer days and hours. What is holding the lid on the current wave of violence is the fact that “the livelihoods of a few 100,000 Palestinians continue to rely on Israel”.
Clashes at the site have become common.
In the meantime, Israel has forged ahead with the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which cut crisscrossing furrows through Palestinian territory.
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“There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years”, Kerry said. This week has seen a number of Israelis killed at the hands of individuals who are intent on violence.
