Palestinian shot after stabbing Israeli

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday described a wave of Palestinian knife and car-ramming attacks as terrorism that must be condemned as he held talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on how to end the violence.

In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s executive committee, said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had chosen a policy of unfettered settlement construction over a two-state solution to the perennial Arab-Israeli conflict.

“There can be no peace when we have an onslaught of terror – not here, not anywhere else in the world, which is experiencing this same assault by militant Islamists and the forces of terror”, Netanyahu told Kerry.

On Monday, an Israeli soldier was stabbed to death while another was seriously wounded in the same attack at a petrol station on the edge of the occupied West Bank.

“Today I express my complete condemnation for any act of terror that takes innocent lives”, Kerry said.

A Palestinian official, who asked not to be identified, said Kerry had asked Abbas to try to achieve at least a week of calm to persuade Netanyahu to pursue confidence-building measures.

A Palestinian teenager also succumbed to his wounds two weeks after being shot during clashes with Israeli forces.

Attacks by Palestinians have killed 19 Israelis and 91 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, among them 58 said by Israel to be assailants. The Palestinian health ministry says 97 Palestinians have been killed in the wave of violence.

After his meeting with Mr. Abbas, Mr. Kerry said he knows “that the situation for Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza is, at this moment, very dire”.

In his public remarks with Rivlin, Kerry referred to the daily attacks only as “violence” not “terrorism”, which he said with Netanyahu.

In addition, Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old from Kerry’s home state of MA, was killed in a West Bank shooting last week.

The headline turns the Palestinian attackers into the victims and instead portrays Israelis as the party at fault. “We believe that the entire worldwide community should support this effort”.

There is no settlement freeze, nor will there be one, Netanyahu continued, according to the senior official.

“We are committed to that, two states with two peoples living side by side in peace and security”, he said.

He went to say that, since 2009, the US, EU, Russian Federation and the United Nations – along with the wider worldwide community – have all been aware of Netanyahu’s intentions and actions on the ground. This year’s annual Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People was marked with a particular sense of urgency and concern following the recent violence in the region.