Abbas’ erroneous claim fuels Israeli incitement allegation

If you legally own a gun, then carry it.

For many Israelis, the last two weeks’ bloodshed has been close to home and unpredictable – “lone-wolf” attacks different from the suicide bombings of the Palestinian uprising a decade ago or rocket salvoes in the 2014 Gaza war.

“We’re always concerned about credible reports of excessive use of force against civilians, and we routinely raise our concerns about that”, said spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday.

“‘We know who is responsible, but we will not expose those findings in order to protect our intelligence sources”, said Ya’alon during a meeting of the Likud youth branch in early September 2015. Nor is there an obvious armed campaign organized by a militant group.

According to a poll for the Israeli parliament’s TV station, 57 percent of Israelis believe the conflict is about religion, against 38 percent who see vying territorial claims as the cause.

Israel responded by announcing the boy was alive and being treated at Hadassah Hospital.

That failure was shown by the inability of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to formulate a coherent policy, even a clear message, on the current outbreak of violence, as shown by his statement on October 8, 2015 that he would strengthen the hand of those defending the Al-Aqsa Mosque while insisting that he is against violence.

Abbas was speaking amid spiking tensions between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Israel has repeatedly accused Abbas of fomenting violence with what it says are incendiary comments.

“We have no illusions about Hamas and other extremist groups that are interested in this sort of confrontation (and) interested in seeing more terrorism”, Regev said.

“Collective punishment is never permissible under any circumstances”, it said. Behind the scenes, Abbas has been urging his security commanders to clamp down on violence, saying attacks on Israelis counter Palestinian interests.

The other saw a 23-year-old Palestinian stab and moderately wound a woman of around 70 before being shot dead by police.

Isreal has also called up about 1,300 reserve border police officers and recruited 300 security guards for duties tied to public transportation, in light of several recent attacks on buses or at bus stops.

Asked on Army Radio about the remarks, Yaalon said: “Are we exercising excessive force?”

“Locking down East Jerusalem neighborhoods will infringe upon the freedom of movement of all Palestinian residents rather than being a narrowly tailored response to a specific concern”, Human Rights Watch has said in a statement.

In contrast, 22% of Arabs and 36.3% of Jews said the best approach would be to annex the territories and establish one state under Israeli rule on all of the land.

The unrest that has engulfed Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, the most serious in years, has claimed the lives of 32 Palestinians and seven Israelis.

And the people carrying out the attacks are young, often teenagers.

Besides this Palestinian refusal to engage in mutual security activity, two things are troubling: the official Palestinian praise for terrorists and the disloyalty of Israeli Arabs to their country, Israel.