UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but after two days of discussions in the region appeared no nearer to ending weeks of violence.
At a news conference with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Ban denounced “hateful discourse” on both sides and said Israel’s response to Palestinian knife attacks had “added to the already difficult challenges of restoring calm.”
Nine Israelis have been killed in Palestinian stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks since the start of the month, while 48 Palestinians, including 24 attackers, among them children, have been killed by Israeli security forces in response.
Photo: EPA
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 Saudi Arabia, which is also revered by Jews as the location of two ancient Jewish temples.
In his comments after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, and again after meeting Abbas, Ban emphasized the need to reinforce the “status quo” at al-Aqsa, where non-Muslim prayer has been banned for centuries.
Israel has said it has not and will not change the rules.
“I welcome Israel’s repeated assurances that it has no intention of changing the historic ‘status quo’ at the holy site,” Ban said. “In my meetings yesterday with Israeli officials, I stressed that only through actions on the ground will perceptions begin to change.”
Later in the day he was scheduled to address the UN Security Council by video-conference from Ramallah to brief it on his trip. Ban’s report, delivered in a closed-door meeting, comes on the eve of a ministerial-level debate at the Security Council on the way forward in the Middle East amid fears that the violence could spiral out of control.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian who stabbed and wounded a soldier near the Jewish settlement of Adam in the occupied West Bank, police said.
In a separate incident in the West Bank, soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian woman with a knife who approached the settlement of Yitzhar, the military said. Palestinian medics said she was 15 and her family questioned the military account.
Netanyahu flew to Germany for talks with Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel later in the day and is scheduled to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry and the EU Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini in Berlin today.
At the news conference with Ban, Abbas reiterated the need for international protection at al-Aqsa.
In Paris, the executive board of the UN cultural heritage body UNESCO yesterday adopted a resolution condemning Israel’s handling of the al-Aqsa issue.
However, it dropped a potentially more controversial clause laying claim to Jerusalem’s Western Wall as a holy site for Muslims only, Israeli diplomats said.
Additional reporting by AP
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