Binyamin Netanyahu has cancelled a trip to Germany amid continuing violence between Palestinians and Israelis.



A number of incidents on Wednesday scotched hopes the situation might be calming, after almost a week in which tensions have spiked amid clashes and lethal attacks.

The postponement of Thursday’s summit, which was to mark 50 years of diplomatic ties between Israel and Germany, came as Netanyahu convened his top security advisers to discuss the worsening situation.

Wednesday saw three separate serious incidents: in Jerusalem, outside Bethlehem, and in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Gat, where a Palestinian reportedly stabbed an Israeli soldier and tried to take his weapon before fleeing into a building where he was shot dead.

Video footage showed armed police and soldiers running towards a building, and then in a room standing over a body lying in a pool of blood. According to police, the suspect had approached an armed Israel Defence Forces soldier after stepping off a bus and attempted to snatch his weapon.

The Kiryat Gat incident will be especially worrying for Israelis, suggesting that the recent tensions – which had been largely confined to Jerusalem and the occupied territories – may be spreading to other parts of Israel.



It followed clashes on Tuesday night at a demonstration in support of the al-Aqsa mosque in the seaside town of Jaffa by Israelis of Palestinian origin.

The Kiryat Gat incident followed an alleged attempted stabbing by an 18-year-old Palestinian woman who was shot by an Israeli man during the incident, which took place in Jerusalem’s Old City, close to where two Israelis were stabbed to death at the weekend.

In the third incident, a female Israeli settler’s car was stoned near Beit Sahour, which adjoins Bethlehem, and other settlers apparently fired on Palestinians, seriously injuring a youth. The settler attacked in her car said that a group of Palestinian youths had tried to pull her from the vehicle at the time the shooting took place. According to the Ma’an news agency, which interviewed locals, the youth who was shot was a student involved in the attack on the car.

German government sources disclosed the cancellation of Netanyahu’s trip, which had already been heavily curtailed because of the situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. An Israeli official confirmed the cancellation.

Elsewhere, clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli security forces across the West Bank led to dozens of injuries among Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The most serious clashes occurred in the area of Beit El, east of Ramallah, and in the Nablus, Bethlehem and Jericho regions. In one incident, undercover Israeli officers who had infiltrated a group of Palestinian stone throwers shot and beat several men, injuring one seriously.

The incident was captured on video by a local Palestinian agency and the Agence France-Presse news agency. According to an AFP witness, four masked men, one carrying a flag of the Islamist movement Hamas, were throwing rocks when others among them suddenly drew pistols. As the infiltrators grabbed and beat one man, they opened fire, while stones flew at them. One of the Palestinians was hit in the back of the head.

Palestinian stone throwers wounded by ‘undercover Israelis’

As evening fell there was no respite, with two further attempted stabbing incidents reported in Jerusalem and the central Israel town of Petah Tikva, where an Israeli man was injured at a shopping mall after being stabbed in the chest by a Palestinian who was restrained by other shoppers and arrested.

Police also arrested a 15-year-old Palestinian who they say pulled a knife and attempted to stab them when they approached him for questioning.

Four Israelis have been killed since Thursday in a stabbing and a drive-by shooting blamed on Palestinian militants. Police shot dead the Palestinian knife-wielder and the military arrested five members of Hamas for the shooting.



Two Palestinians, one of them a 13-year-old, have been killed and about 170 injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank since Sunday. Another Palestinian man, suspected of having stabbed and wounded an Israeli teenager, was shot dead by police in Jerusalem.

Amid the continuing violence, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, moved to clarify recent statements from himself and the PLO executive committee regarding the violence. “I support a popular, nonviolent struggle and oppose all violence and use of weapons. I’ve made clear a number of times that I don’t want to return to the cycle of violence,” he told the Israeli daily Haaretz.

“We do not seek violence and have not sought to escalate it, but the aggression against al-Aqsa mosque and the worshippers in the mosque have led to this, and we are constantly trying to make sure it doesn’t intensify.

“I am prepared to act against violence and am taking steps in this direction, and the security apparatuses won’t use force or weapons but will maintain order. If there is no friction there will be no confrontation, and those who seek an arrangement will work to prevent friction and restore calm.”

Netanyahu has been under pressure from rightwing allies in his razor-thin coalition to respond forcefully to Palestinian unrest, but that could risk provoking the violent escalation of an already volatile situation.



As part of Netanyahu’s pledged steps to stem what he termed a “wave of terrorism”, Israeli forces destroyed the homes of two Palestinians involved in attacks last year.

Adding his voice to the mounting concern, the Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, warned against religious incitement at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, or Temple Mount, saying his country and Palestinians were “sitting on a volcano”.

“Those who wish to turn the tragedy between us, Palestinians and Israel … into a religious war have blood on their hands,” Rivlin, whose post is mainly ceremonial, told journalists.