UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday but after two days of discussions in the region appeared no nearer to ending weeks of violence.
At a news conference with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Mr Ban Ki-moon denounced “hateful discourse” on both sides and said Israel’s response to Palestinian knife attacks had “added to the already difficult challenges of restoring calm”.
Nine Israelis have been killed in Palestinian stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks since the start of October, while 48 Palestinians, including 24 attackers, among them children, have been killed by Israeli security forces in response.
An Eritrean migrant mistaken for an attacker was shot and beaten to death on Sunday by an angry group of Israelis in the town of Beersheba.
Among the causes of the turmoil are Palestinians’ anger at what they see as Jewish encroachment on the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, Islam’s holiest site outside Saudi Arabia, which is also revered by Jews as the location of two ancient Jewish temples.
In his comments after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, and again after meeting Abbas, Mr Ban Ki-moon emphasised the need to reinforce the status quo at al-Aqsa, where non-Muslim prayer has been banned for centuries. Israel says it has not and will not change the rules.
“I welcome Israel’s repeated assurances that it has no intention of changing the historic status quo at the holy site,” Mr Ban Ki-moon said.
“In my meetings yesterday with Israeli officials, I stressed that only through actions on the ground will perceptions begin to change.”
Yesterday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian who stabbed and wounded a soldier near the Jewish settlement of Adam in the occupied West Bank, police said.
In a separate incident in the West Bank, soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian woman with a knife who approached the settlement of Yitzhar, the military said. Palestinian medics said she was 15 and her family questioned the military account.
US Secretary of State John Kerry Kerry is set to travel to the region later in the week where he will meet King Abdullah of Jordan, who has a role as a custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
Mr Abbas will also meet Mr Kerry and Mr Abdullah in Jordan. As well as the holy site, Mr Abbas has emphasised Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and settlement-building as reasons for the surge in Palestinian violence.
Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Mr Abbas of inciting the violence. In comments at the news conference with Ban on Wednesday, Abbas returned to the need for international protection at al-Aqsa, known to Jews as Temple Mount.
“The continuation of the occupation and violations to Muslim and Christian sites in East Jerusalem may open the gates to a religious conflict,” he said. “We must maintain the historical condition and not the status quo imposed by Israel.”
In Paris, the executive board of the United Nations cultural heritage body UNESCO adopted a resolution condemning Israel’s handling of the al-Aqsa issue. But it dropped a potentially more controversial clause laying claim to Jerusalem’s Western Wall as a holy site for Muslims only, Israeli diplomats said.