Israeli-Palestinian tensions simmer ahead of US envoy visit

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli forces shot dead a knife attacker in Jerusalem on Monday, police said, as a ceasefire holds in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza ahead of a visit by Washington’s top diplomat.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken left Washington around noon local time and is due to arrive in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning, days after an Egypt-brokered truce halted the conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers Hamas.

US President Joe Biden said his top envoy will meet “with Israeli leaders about our ironclad commitment to Israel’s security”, as well as seeking to rebuild ties with the Palestinians.

While Gaza remained calm on Monday, Israeli police said an attacker stabbed two young Israeli men in Jerusalem before police shot him dead.

Palestinian news agency WAFA said that Israeli forces had shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian high school student from occupied East Jerusalem.

Hadassah medical centre in Jerusalem said it was treating two men in their twenties for stab wounds. Both were in a stable condition and one was identified by the army as a soldier.

The 11-day conflict with Hamas in Gaza sparked inter-communal tensions in Israel itself between Jewish and Arab citizens of Palestinian descent, and amplified protests across the occupied West Bank.

Overnight Israeli forces rounded up 43 Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, including 27 in the latter, the Palestinian Prisoners Club rights group said.

Israeli police, who operate in East Jerusalem, said late Sunday that they had arrested 1,550 suspects and had charged 150 over the past two weeks over “violent events”.

Sheikh Jarrah flashpoint 

Monday’s fatal altercation took place a short distance from the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the site of regular protests against the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in favour of Jewish settlers.

Tensions there built earlier this month to culminate in repeated clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli forces inside the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound, triggering initial volleys of rocket fire from Gaza on May 10.

Subsequent Israeli air strikes and artillery fire on Gaza killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded over 1,900 people, the Gaza health ministry says.

Rocket and other fire from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child and an Arab-Israeli teenager, an Israeli soldier, one Indian, and two Thai nationals, medics say. Some 357 people in Israel have been wounded.

There is controversy about how many of those killed in Gaza were combatants, and how many were civilians.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the bombing campaign had killed “more than 200 terrorists” in Gaza.

‘Years of neglect’ 

Alongside meeting Israeli leaders, Biden said his secretary of state would also engage with the Palestinians.

Relations between Washington and the Palestinian Authority fell apart under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, who recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — a move that broke with decades of international consensus.

Blinken “will continue our administration’s efforts to rebuild ties to, and support for, the Palestinian people and leaders, after years of neglect,” the US president said.

Biden said last week his country was committed to helping provide humanitarian relief and supporting reconstruction in Gaza “in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal”.

The office of Israel’s defence minister announced on Monday Israeli authorities had seized various materials bound for Gaza before the latest war.

“Their suspected destination was a Hamas military wing’s manufacturing site,” Benny Gantz’s office said in a statement.

It added that he had also signed orders to seize millions of shekels in gold discovered in foiled smuggling attempts from Gaza to the West Bank, amid suspicions Hamas was using it to fund “terrorism” there.

Israel’s air campaign has ravaged Gaza’s infrastructure, as well as made at least 6,000 people homeless, the UN’s humanitarian agency says.

Up to 800,000 are without access to clean water in the coastal enclave, which has been under blockade since 2007.

In Gaza city on Monday, several men helped Nazmi Al Dahdouh set up a tent on the mounds of rubble where his home stood before it was hit by an Israeli air strike.

“Where else should I go?” said the elderly man in a long robe and white skull cap.

“I will live here. I will either die, or live, or they will bombard me again.”