Palestinian killed by Israel army fire in West Bank: ministry

With U.S.-backed talks on a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territory frozen since early 2014, Netanyahu said there could be no peace while an “onslaught of terror” continued.

JERUSALEM-Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts this week to prevent the current round of Palestinian-Israeli violence from escalating failed to close the gap between the two sides and widened the gap between Jerusalem and Washington.

Calling the attacks “a challenge to all civilized people”, Kerry told Rivlin, “We all have a responsibility to condemn that violence, to make it clear that no frustration, no politics, no ideology, no emotion justifies taking innocent lives”. If the global community wants Israel to okay building plans for Palestinians, it should recognize Israel’s construction in the settlement blocs, the prime minister also reportedly declared. “And it will and it is”, he said.

Kerry warned today that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could worsen beyond fix unless both sides made rapid compromises.

“I know that the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza is, at this moment, very dire, that there are extraordinary concerns, obviously, about the violence”, Kerry told reporters. Two others were hurt in the afternoon attack – an Israeli woman in her 20s who was lightly injured in the stabbing, and another caught in friendly fire by Israeli security forces.

Ahead of meeting Netanyahu, Kerry condemned the wave of Palestinian attacks on Israelis since the start of October.

Three Palestinian attackers – including a teenage girl – and an Israeli soldier died in violence Monday.

Violence has flared up across the Palestinian territories in recent weeks.

Since September, a tide of Palestinian stabbings, shootings and auto rammings has killed at least 19 Israelis and an American student. The secretary of state mentioned Schwartz twice by name.

An Israeli source familiar with details of the Netanyahu-Kerry meeting, said that it ended without any agreement, according to the daily Ha’aretz.

The USA purports to be attentive to Palestinian liberation in the form of a two-state solution and even occasionally hinders some aspects of Israeli occupation (such as settlement construction).

What is also outrageous is that these resolutions claim to care about Palestinians, yet the United Nations proves itself oblivious to the hundreds of Palestinians who continue to be slaughtered, maimed and expelled by Assad’s forces.

“But this street violence doesn’t provide any leader with a framework within which they can look their people in the eye and say, ‘There’s a reason to be sitting down and talking about this or that, ‘ ” he added.