Israeli police shoot Palestinian girl

Knife attacks, shootings and protests have become near daily occurrences since October 1 in the latest surge of violence in the decades-old conflict, sparking a diplomatic scramble to avert what many fear heralds a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Efforts to douse Israeli-Palestinian tensions over Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound ran into trouble Monday when the Islamic trust which administers the holy site accused Israeli police of blocking the agreed installation of cameras. Such accusations have been fueled by a growing number of visits to the compound by Jewish groups seeking prayer rights, which are backed by senior Israeli politicians.

Netanyahu vowed that Jews would continue to be allowed to visit but not pray at the compound and agreed that 24-hour surveillance cameras could be installed, adding these were in Israel’s interest.

An Israeli police spokesperson did not confirm that the Palestinian woman had been killed, but did confirm that an Israeli police officer shot the woman after the police officer “saw the woman had a knife”.

One of them, Abdu Khader, said he was only metres away when he saw Irshaid approach the checkpoint, wearing a white headscarf.

That status quo agreement, unfortunately, includes the policy of only Muslims being allowed to pray on the Temple Mount. “Secondly, to show where the provocations are really coming from, and prevent them in advance”, said Netanyahu. The site is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and home to the biblical Jewish Temples.

Police later pronounced the Palestinian dead and identified her as 17-year-old Dania Irshaid.

“There will not be calm without political prospects to definitively end the occupation”, said Nabila Sheath, an official from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’ West Bank-based Fatah. The surveillance system is the centerpiece of a series of steps announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry over the weekend.

Conflict… An elderly Palestinian man acts as a human barrier between Israeli security forces and Palestinian stone throwers during clashes following Friday prayers in the West Bank town of Hebron.

Indeed, this violence may be the opportunity Israelis need to realign and make a political deal with the Palestinians. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are enough Palestinians who agree with Israelis that the current violence is intolerable and the status-quo of occupation is unsustainable.

The review comes after weeks of Israeli-Palestinian violence, much of it concentrated in east Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by the Palestinians for their future capital. An Israeli Arab attacker has also been killed.

Police said the woman approached a police checkpoint in the volatile city on Sunday and pulled out a knife.

But police said an assailant who shot dead an Israeli soldier and wounded about 10 others at a bus station in the southern city of Beersheba “was in contact with Hamas for an extended period” during which he planned the attack.

In a separate incident, two Palestinians disguised as ultra-Orthodox Jews stabbed an Israeli in the West Bank, wounding him moderately, the Israeli military said.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said the step, if adopted, would deprive Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem of the most basic rights and services and provoke confrontations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the new measure at Al-Aqsa was taken to allay Palestinian fears that Israel was planning to change longstanding rules governing the site.

The Palestinian-led global Solidarity Movement said it had collected eyewitness accounts saying the same thing: that she had first been shot in the legs, that she tried to walk backwards with her hands in the air, but that she was killed with seven or eight shots.

The conflicting claims to the hilltop mount lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have spilled over into violence in the past.