Group: Israeli officers used ‘excessive’ force in West Bank

Soldiers were conducting “routine security activity” near the West Bank village of Hawara when forces approached a Palestinian to question him, the military said.

He told Army Radio on Tuesday that the attack was “clearly a Jewish attack that I am ashamed of” but said that there is “not enough evidence against [the suspects]”, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported.

Just two days after a poll showed that two-thirds of Palestinians support the current wave of stabbing attacks against Israelis, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon accused Israel of bringing the trouble on itself.

The condition of the alleged assailant was not immediately clear.

“Terrorist attack at the entrance of Jerusalem minutes ago”, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld tweeted.

According to police, the attacker also had an axe inside the vehicle. While inside the camp, Israeli troops raided a local medical centre and clashed with youth, according to locals.

“Jerusalem, one of the oldest cities in the world, holds shrines sacred to billions of people worldwide – Muslims, Jews and Christians alike”, he added. The Palestinians say it is the result of frustrations stemming from Israel’s almost 50-year occupation.

The quartet groups the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union in an effort to broker an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Wednesday afternoon, envoys of the global diplomatic quartet met senior Israeli officials in Jerusalem, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Israel’s Jerusalem municipality authorised zoning plans for 891 new homes in Gilo, a settlement it considers to lie inside the city limits.

“Yesterday, it was Lebanon, France, Russia, the United States; but war has been raging for years in Iraq and Syria”, he said.

In his annual pre-Christmas address, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, called for calm to be restored.