Israeli medics and soldiers wheel on a stretcher a wounded Palestinian, suspected of stabbing an Israeli, in the West Bank city of Hebron October 9, 2015. Clashes erupted at the shrine between young Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli security forces.
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Abbas also took the occasion to slam Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments suggesting that Palestinian religious leader Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini convinced Adolf Hitler to exterminate Europe’s Jews. Eight Israelis have been killed from stab injuries.
“I want the ID to go to the Old City, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, to the place of my childhood”, he said.
The United Nations rights chief cautioned that “a catastrophe becomes more likely” due to the “supremely sensitive issue” relating to occupied East Jerusalem, “and specifically the site that is known to Muslims as the Al Aqsa compound or the Haram Al Sharif, and to Jews as the Temple Mount”.
However, the number of Jewish visitors has doubled in the past five years, accompanied by statements from Jewish groups and several leading Israeli politicians demanding prayers at the site.
Numerous youths leading the unrest were born under Israeli occupation, and see no way out, with a moribund peace process offering them little hope of achieving their dream of a Palestinian state. Israel says the wave of violence is the result of Palestinian incitement. Many of those carrying out attacks have been teenagers. Israel has periodically undertaken such measures for what it says are security precautions.
Netanyahu said the cameras would serve to “disprove the claim that Israel is changing the status quo [in which Al-Aqsa is administered by the Jordanian authorities]; Second, to show where the provocations really come from and foil them before they happen”.
Palestinians are also frustrated by the failure of numerous rounds of peace talks to secure them an independent state in territories including the West Bank that Israel captured in a 1967 war.
Israel has responded with a crackdown in Palestinian neighborhoods, deploying thousands of security forces and placing roadblocks and military-style checkpoints at the entrances.
The mosque complex is the third-holiest site in Islam and the most sacred for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount.
On Wednesday, Amnesty International’s Philip Luther said that Israeli forces “have ripped up the rule book” and implemented “extreme and unlawful measures”.
Maan, the Palestinian news agency, cited unnamed witnesses saying that Israeli troops shot the man 11 times and planted a knife by his corpse.
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“This policy is really about preventing a proper investigation of how each of them was shot; if they were shot lethally aiming to kill, or shot to wound”, said Rafat Sub Laban, advocacy coordinator for Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. He accused Israel of excessive use of force against the Palestinians, and he noted violence carried out by Jewish settlers.
