Kerry Urges End Of Inflammatory Rhetoric In Talks With Israel’s Netanyahu

Remarks from US Secretary of State come after Israeli PM suggested mufti of Jerusalem persuaded Hitler to kill Jews

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Thursday for an end to inflam­ma­to­ry Israeli-Palestinian rhetoric dur­ing a meet­ing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which took place as the death toll from a recent surge of vio­lence again climbed. Speaking to reporters ahead of talks with the Israeli PM, Kerry made no ref­er­ence to Netanyahu’s sug­ges­tion this week that Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem dur­ing the 1940s, per­suad­ed Adolf Hitler to exter­mi­nate the Jews. Those com­ments, which come after three weeks of Israeli-Palestinian vio­lence, have attract­ed wide crit­i­cism from, among oth­ers, Israeli oppo­si­tion politi­cians and Holocaust experts, who accused the prime min­is­ter of dis­tort­ing the his­tor­i­cal record. Meanwhile, the cycle of vio­lence con­tin­ues in Israel and the occu­pied Palestinian ter­ri­to­ries. On Thursday, a Palestinian was shot dead dur­ing an alleged stab­bing attack Israeli at a bus stop west of Jerusalem.

Israeli police said on Thursday that the two sus­pects attempt­ed to get on a chil­dren’s school bus in Beit Shemesh, a major­i­ty ultra-ortho­dox area. After they were asked why they were doing so, they attempt­ed to stab an Israeli at the bus stop at which point they were shot by the police, wit­ness­es said. The Israeli, a 25-year-old man, was mod­er­ate­ly injured in the attack, police said. The injured men were tak­en to hos­pi­tal, with the sec­ond sus­pect said to be in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion. Since Oct. 1, a total of 52 Palestinians — includ­ing sus­pect­ed attack­ers, unarmed demon­stra­tors and bystanders — have been killed by Israeli sol­diers or set­tlers, while eight Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks. Israeli forces have been accused of using exces­sive force against pro­test­ers and sus­pect­ed attack­ers. Rights groups have said “dis­pro­por­tion­ate vio­lence” has been used against Palestinian chil­dren, with at least 10 killed in the violence.

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 tem­ples. “It is absolute­ly crit­i­cal to end all incite­ment, to end all vio­lence and to find a road for­ward to build the pos­si­bil­i­ty, which is not there today, for a larg­er process,” Kerry told reporters as he and Netanyahu posed for pic­tures. Kerry said he hoped that the two men could agree on steps “that take us beyond the con­dem­na­tions and beyond the rhetoric.” Diplomats hold out lit­tle hope for any resump­tion of broad­er Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which col­lapsed in 2014. Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians for the recent surge in killings, sin­gling out Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “There is no ques­tion that wave of attacks is dri­ven direct­ly by incite­ment. Incitement from Hamas, incite­ment from the Islamist move­ment in Israel, and incite­ment, I am sor­ry to say, from President Abbas,” he said.

A senior U.S. State Department offi­cial told reporters that Kerry hopes to per­suade both sides to “tamp down” their rhetoric dur­ing a four-day trip to Europe and the Middle East in which he also plans to meet Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah. His tone mir­rored that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a joint news con­fer­ence with Netanyahu on Wednesday evening. “We have to do every­thing to calm down the sit­u­a­tion and in this spir­it I think all sides need to make a con­tri­bu­tion,” she said. It is not clear why Netanyahu launched into the issue of the then-Mufti of Jerusalem, Husseini. His remarks come with Israeli-Palestinian ten­sions at a new peak, notably over the Jerusalem holy site over­seen by the cur­rent mufti. Israel says it respects the sta­tus quo, which allows tourists and non-Muslim vis­i­tors to enter the Al Aqsa com­pound at some hours but for­bids non-Muslim prayer.

Palestinians say that ultra-Orthodox and nation­al-reli­gious Jews are exploit­ing the rules to enter the area, called the Noble Sanctuary by Muslims and the Temple Mount by Jews, in grow­ing num­bers and sur­rep­ti­tious­ly pray there, in breach of the sta­tus quo. Israel says it expels any­one who prays, but the prac­tice con­tin­ues and some Israel gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have been open about encour­ag­ing Jewish access to the area, say­ing all monothe­is­tic reli­gions should have the right to pray. U.S. offi­cials say they hope a change in the rhetoric over the holy site could help ease ten­sions more generally.
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