Following the shooting of a local man on Wednesday, big groups of Palestinian youths ran amok in east Jerusalem in protest. This violence is threatening fragile peace efforts in the region, and comes on the back of the Palestinian president indicating that he may be willing to press on with the peace talks despite Israel resuming its West Bank settlement construction efforts.
The situation became so dire yesterday that Israeli riot police stormed the hilltop compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Ironically, this site is where the previous Palestinian uprising began almost a decade ago and is historically the most explosive site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This violence comes after less than a month of peace talks, and at a particularly tense time as the Palestinian president had previously been threatening to pull out of the negotiations due to Israel’s announced intentions to end its 10-month slowdown of construction in the Jewish settlements of the West Bank.
The construction slowdown was announced last November as a result of forceful U.S. pressure to help draw the Palestinians into negotiations with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who - despite having accepted the concept of a Palestinian state – is not popular among Palestinians.
The violence yesterday was perhaps an expression of the visible tension that has been built up over the last week since Netanyahu announced on Sunday that construction would begin again, reports the Washington Times.