Netanyahu ‘perfectly open’ to meeting with Abbas

More than 30 Palestinians have been killed in the past two weeks of conflict that a few observers are calling a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising. The pre-dawn attack blackened exterior walls of the stone structure located near the Balata refugee camp and a scene of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the past.

On Friday, hundreds joined protests after Muslim noon prayers, after Palestinian factions called for a “day of rage”.

Mansour had earlier warned that Israel is deliberately fueling violence with Palestinians to deflect attention away from its diplomatic failures.

“Israel is using exactly the kind and the amount of legitimate force that any one of those governments, those municipalities and those police forces would use if they had people wielding knives, meat cleavers, axes, trying to kill people on their streets”, he said.

President Barack Obama condemned recent violence in Israel on Friday and reiterated that a two-state solution is the best answer to continued unrest.

The fate of a Palestinian boy seized center stage Thursday in the battle of narratives accompanying the recent burst of deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence.

But Dina Matar, of the Centre for Media Studies at SOAS in London and author of “What It Means to be Palestinian”, said that within Palestinian communities viral videos are more representative of frustration than a cause of it.

At one point, shouts were heard, followed by several gunshots.

Although the security services have claimed there was a knife in her hand, she can be seen making no effort to attack them.

The attacker’s name has not been released, but local journalists said they did not know him.

Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel has illegally annexed, are subject to Israeli civil law – unlike the West Bank, where Palestinians live under Israeli military rule. Four Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including a laborer disguised as a journalist who stabbed an Israeli soldier.

A wave of stabbing attacks has spread fear in Jerusalem and much of Israel, shattering the brittle sense of security Israelis had managed to restore a decade after Palestinian suicide bombings terrified the nation. The recent attacks have largely been carried out by individuals with no known ties to militant groups.

Contrary to insinuations by the State Department (not to mention Palestinian terrorists), Israel has upheld that status quo since 1967, when it took control of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The violence has escalated as tensions have mounted in recent weeks over a part of the Old City of Jerusalem that is sacred to both Jews and Muslims.

With U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry due to travel to the Middle East soon to try to calm the violence, Israeli officials said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly ordered cabinet ministers to say no more publicly about the latest acrimony in a long-troubled relationship with the Obama administration. That new big lie is that Israel is executing Palestinians.

On Thursday morning, in an apparent retreat, the Palestine Liberation Organisation circulated an updated version of Mr Abbas’s speech, where the word “execution” was changed to “shooting in cold blood”. Thirty-one Palestinians have been killed, including 14 identified by Israel as attackers, and the others in clashes between stone-throwers and Israeli troops.

Suhad Bishara, an Adalah lawyer, said the Israeli justice ministry had given no indication that its police investigations unit, Mahash, would investigate any of the incidents.

“The burning and desecration of Joseph’s tomb last night is a blatant violation and contradiction of the basic value of freedom of worship”, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said.

Many Jews believe it to be the final resting place of the biblical Joseph, while Muslims believe that an Islamic cleric, Sheikh Yussef (Joseph) Dawiqat was buried there two centuries ago.