Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in Ramallah on Tuesday that the Palestinian leadership is planning “steps to counter Israeli tensions”, the PA leader’s office said.
Abbas’s comments during a snap visit to Safadi came after weeks of tension between Israel and the Palestinians, some of them centered around the holy site of the flashpoint al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
Abbas slammed the “daily offensive against al-Aqsa” as well as domestic demolition and the approval of new Israeli settlement units in the West Bank by the Israeli government.
“The continuation of the current situation cannot be accepted and cannot be tolerated,” Abbas said, according to the official WAFA news agency.
Abbas slammed “American silence” and “international impotence” in curbing “Israeli provocations and practices”.
Abbas told Safadi that the international community had proved “unable to compel Israel to comply with international law”.
While Ramallah was initially optimistic about the current US administration under US President Joe Biden, PA has since become disheartened. Palestinian officials say Biden has failed to deliver on key promises, such as the reopening of the US consulate in Jerusalem and the Palestinian mission in Washington.
Biden is set to visit Israel and the West Bank in the coming weeks, his first visit to the region since entering office last year.
Safadi was accompanied by Jordanian intelligence director Ahmed Hosni. The PA chief was accompanied by several top advisers, including espionage chief Majid Faraz and Hussein al-Sheikh, who is responsible for coordinating with Israel.
“Israel’s failure to respect international law will plunge the region into a cycle of violence and escalation,” Safadi said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 27, 2022 in the West Bank city of Ramallah. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin, Poole)
Over the past week, Palestinian terrorist groups threatened violence at the annual Jerusalem Day flag march, with some Israeli nationalists chanting racist slogans and clashing with Palestinians. Others raised Israeli flags at the Temple Mount sanctuary – the third holiest site for Muslims and the holiest for Jews – during a visit.
Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians have escalated in the past few months. A bloody terror wave has killed 19 people in Israeli cities since late March, the deadliest spike in attacks in years.
More than 30 Palestinians have been killed in the same period, most of them during Israeli military raids in the West Bank in search of terrorist suspects. Many were killed during clashes or attacks with Israeli forces, but at least some were apparently unarmed civilians. They included popular Al Jazeera journalist Shirin Abu Aqleh, who was shot in controversial circumstances during an Israeli military raid in Jenin.
