Palestinian FM says Netanyahu seeks ‘third Intifada’

Palestinians escalated their uprising against recurrent Israeli violations in Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestinian lands on Monday while Israeli occupation forces shot dead two alleged knife attackers in the city.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al Malki on Monday accused Israel of seeking to spark "a third Intifada", as violence again flared in occupied Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Agence France-Presse reported.

Four Israeli settlers and 25 Palestinians, including seven alleged assailants and eight children, have died in 12 days of bloodshed, stirred by Muslim anger over increasing Jewish storming of Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, according to Reuters. 

In the space of one hour, Israeli forces said a knife-wielding Palestinian woman wounded a soldier in central Jerusalem and two men carried out stabbings that injured two Israeli settlers, one of them critically, on the northern edge of the city.

The woman was shot and wounded. Israeli forces said one of the assailants was shot and killed and the other was injured.

Hours earlier, a soldier shot dead a Palestinian who allegedly tried to stab him, according to Israeli forces. The account was disputed by a Palestinian passerby, who said he witnessed the incident and saw no knife.

‘Third Intifada’

“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu wants to instigate a third intifada. He wants to avoid problems that he is facing in the political and diplomatic arena, where he has failed miserably,” Malki told AFP in Vienna.

Malki said Netanyahu had committed a “grave mistake” by “violating the status quo” of East Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites and the holiest site in Judaism.

“Netanyahu is widening the scope of the conflict from a political one with the Palestinians — which always has a possibility of finding a political solution — to an unlimited war with Muslims around the world,” Malki warned.

Calling on Israel to act “according to international law”, he said there was nevertheless still “a possibility to contain” the crisis.