Arab leaders inciting violence, Israel says
Netanyahu appeals to Palestinians to ‘kick out the extremists among you’
Palestinians carried out three stabbings Monday in Jerusalem, leaving a teenage Israeli boy in critical condition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily accusing the country’s Arab leaders of helping to incite weeks of violence. Two of the attackers, both teenage boys, were killed.
In a fiery speech at parliament, Netanyahu accused Arab parties of “undermining” the country. He called on Israel’s Arab citizens to “kick out the extremists among you.”
Netanyahu spoke on another bloody day, the latest in a monthlong wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
In a new setback for efforts to restore calm, the quartet of Mideast mediators — the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia — postponed a trip to the region. Edgar Vasquez, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs, said it was at the request of the Israeli government due to the circumstances.
Israeli police reported three separate stabbings across the city, including an assault by two attackers in the East Jerusalem area of Pisgat Zeev.
Police said the pair seriously wounded a 20-year-old man before attacking a teenage boy on a bicycle.
The boy was critically wounded before police shot and killed one of the attackers, while the second was run over by a car. Abdel Nasser Manasra, a relative of Ahmed, 13, and Hassan, 15, said both were cousins. He did not know which had been killed.
Other attacks occurred in Jerusalem’s Old City, where a 17-yearold assailant was killed, and outside the national police headquarters. The attacker, identified as a 16-year-old girl, was shot and wounded, while a police officer was lightly hurt.
The unrest began last month with clashes at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, and quickly spread across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu has come under heavy criticism for failing to stop the violence, and an opinion poll this week showed that more than 70 per cent of the public is dissatisfied with his handling of the crisis.
The violence erupted over the Jewish New Year last month, fuelled by rumours that Israel was plotting to take over a site holy to both Muslims and Jews.
Israel has dismissed the rumours as slanderous and repeatedly said there are no plans to alter a longstanding status quo at the spot, revered by Jews as the site of the biblical Temples and today home to Islam’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In his speech Monday, Netanyahu dismissed the Palestinian accusations as a “total lie” and accused the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the militant group Hamas and Israel’s own Islamic Movement of incitement. He called on President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority, to condemn the violence.
But Netanyahu also went after Arab lawmakers in the chamber, accusing two of them of supporting the violence against Israelis. “It is unbelievable that an Israeli member of parliament calls for terror attacks against Israelis,” he said.
In a message to the Arab public, he urged them “to kick out the extremists among you,” and said he was committed to coexistence.