Violence flares as Palestinians desecrate Jewish site

“I don’t think we can wait for all the issues that exist between Israel and Palestine to be settled for us to try to tamp down violence right now”, he said.

Over the past month, eight Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, majority stabbings.

Hamas operatives in the West Bank are reportedly plotting a major terror attack against Israelis, Channel 10 quoted unnamed Palestinian security officials saying Friday. The rest were killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

Another Palestinian died in clashes in Beit Furik near Nablus, while a Palestinian disguised as a news photographer stabbed and wounded a soldier before being shot dead outside a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

According to the same anonymous sources, Fatah’s military wing may also soon begin perpetrating attacks, despite the fact that the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is ostensibly working to curb attacks against Israelis.

Nearby, in the West Bank city of Nablus, dozens of Palestinians firebombed a site known as Joseph’s Tomb that is revered by a few Jews as the burial place of the son of the biblical patriarch Jacob.

The words come just hours after a Palestinian man posed as a journalist before stabbing and injuring an Israeli soldier. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said the attack violates freedom of worship and that the military will “bring the perpetrators of this despicable act to justice”.

“We are very concerned about the outbreak of violence that initially is centered on Jerusalem, but we always are concerned about the spread of violence elsewhere”, Obama told reporters at a White House news conference yesterday.

A US State Department statement said Mr Kerry spoke with the Israeli Prime Minister on the phone on Friday on “how best to end the recent wave of violence, and to offer U.S. support for efforts to restore calm as soon as possible”.

Nonetheless, he said that “over time, the only way that Israel is going to be truly secure, and the only way the Palestinians will be able to meet the aspirations of their people, is if they are two states living side by side in peace and security”.

Kerry also said he “hoped to visit the region at the appropriate moment”.

Netanyahu on Thursday reiterated his willingness to meet Abbas, while accusing him of inciting and encouraging violence.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas condemned the arson and said the site would be repaired.

The latest round of violence has been partly fuelled by Palestinian anger at what they see as increased Jewish encroachment on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, holy to both Muslims and Jews.

Taye-Brook Zerihoun, the United Nations assistant secretary-general for political affairs, told the council that Israel’s long occupation of Palestinian territory and diminishing prospects for achieving a Palestinian state “have transformed long-simmering Palestinian anger into outright rage”.