During their meeting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said Israel would only agree to take steps to improve the security and economic situation for Palestinians in the West Bank when calm is fully restored, according to the official.
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At a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Kerry expressed his full support for Israel against what he described as the ongoing wave of Palestinian “terrorist” attacks on Israeli civilians.
Two Palestinians were shot and killed in separate incidents Thursday in the West Bank as Israel announced plans to build a new fence near the flashpoint city of Hebron in an effort to contain a two-month spate of violence.
Israeli media have reported that Kerry asked Netanyahu to institute reforms that would help quell the recent intensification of violence in the West bank, among them granting Palestinians in the area building permits.
A Palestinian was shot and killed during clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said. Another resolution urged Israel to end its “occupation” of the Palestinian territories and invoked the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
Earlier in the day, two teenage Palestinian girls attacked and slightly wounded a 70-year-old man with scissors in Jerusalem before a policeman shot them both and killed one.
The violence, fuelled in part by Muslim agitation over increased Jewish visits to East Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound – Islam’s third holiest site and also revered by Jews as the location of two biblical-era temples, prompted Kerry to come and sound out both sides on Tuesday.
The statement renewed the UAE’s condemnation of these provocative Israeli policies and practices and all other serious and repeated violations in the Palestinian territories and considered them as invalid and illegal, which constituted a material, legal and political breach of the provisions of worldwide law and global humanitarian law, as well as the resolutions of worldwide legitimacy.
Kerry, whose nine-month peace mediation between the parties collapsed in April 2014, reiterated the American goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. He said he was dispatched to Israel and the West Bank by President Barack Obama to try to restore calm as well as public confidence in the viability of a two- state solution.
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Further recommendations by the IDF include releasing prisoners, including some held in administrative detention, and allowing goods being exported from the Palestinian Authority to Israel to go through direct security checks instead of the existing system whereby they are transported via checkpoints. Abbas, who believes a deal with Netanyahu is impossible, has provided no indication that he wants to restart direct peace talks anytime soon.
