US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday called for an end to inflammatory Israeli-Palestinian rhetoric as he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who blamed the Palestinians for a recent surge of violence.
Speaking to reporters before their talks, Kerry made no reference to Netanyahu’s suggestion this week that Haj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem during the 1940s, persuaded Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews.
Those comments, which come after three weeks of Israeli-Palestinian violence, have attracted criticism from Israeli opposition politicians and Holocaust experts, who accused the prime minister of distorting the historical record.
Nine Israelis have been killed in Palestinian stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks since the beginning of this month, while 48 Palestinians, including 24 attackers, among them children, have been killed by Israeli security forces in response.
Among the causes of the turmoil are Palestinians’ anger at what they see as Jewish encroachment on the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, Islam’s holiest site outside of Saudi Arabia, which is also revered by Jews as the location of two ancient temples.
“It is absolutely critical to end all incitement, to end all violence and to find a road forward to build the possibility, which is not there today, for a larger process,” Kerry told reporters as he and Netanyahu posed for pictures.
Kerry said he hoped that the two men could agree on steps “that take us beyond the condemnations and beyond the rhetoric.”
Diplomats hold out little hope for any resumption of broader Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which collapsed last year.
Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians for the recent surge in killings, singling out Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“There is no question this wave of attacks is driven directly by incitement. Incitement from Hamas, incitement from the Islamist movement in Israel, and incitement, I am sorry to say, from President Abbas,” he said.
A senior US Department of State official told reporters that Kerry hopes to persuade both sides to “tamp down” their rhetoric during a four-day trip to Europe and the Middle East in which he also plans to meet Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah.
His tone mirrored that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a joint news conference with Netanyahu on Wednesday evening.
“We have to do everything to calm down the situation and in this spirit I think all sides need to make a contribution,” she said.
In related news, an Israeli soldier shot and killed a Jewish man he suspected was a Palestinian “terrorist” in Jerusalem on Wednesday, police said yesterday, while two Palestinians stabbed an Israeli at a bus stop after they tried to board a bus ferrying children to school.
Police shot the two men, one of whom later died while the other was seriously wounded.
Meanwhile, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said soldiers deployed in Jerusalem to reinforce police demanded late on Wednesday that a man show them his ID.
The man refused, scuffled with the soldiers and then attempted to seize one of their weapons. One soldier shot the man, who later died of his wounds, Rosenfeld said.
“The soldiers had high suspicions that he was a terrorist,” he said, adding that the incident is under investigation.
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