LIVE BLOG: The Third Intifada - the unrest continues
Here's a summary of the latest developments as Israeli-Palestinians tensions rise:
- On Saturday three Palestinian teenagers, incluing one woman, were shot dead in theree separate incidents after reportedly attempting to stab Israelis in Hebron and East Jerusalem.
- Early Friday, hundreds of Palestinian youths attacked a site in Nablus - the exact target of the attack remains disputed
- A Palestinian man was shot dead in Hebron after stabbing and wounding an Israeli police officer
- Three Palestinian protesters shot dead by Israeli soldiers - two at the Gaza border and one in Nablus - with clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces also reported in East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron. Another Palestinian who was shot in Gaza protests last week has died of his wounds.
- UN Security Council scheduled to hold an emergency meeting at 1500 GMT to discuss the upsurge of violence
- Israeli forces shot and injured three Palestinian protesters with live fire the central occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem on Friday, while one young man was shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet in his eye and is in moderate to serious condition.
Live Updates
A group of Palestinian journalists has released a statement claiming that an unnamed student, who they said had attended school at the site attacked in what was thought to be an arson attack on the Joseph's Tomb holy site this morning, was involved in the burning of the Dawabsha family home in the village of Duma near Nablus on 31 July. These claims could not be verified.
US President Barack Obama expressed concern Friday about the outbreak of violence centered in Jerusalem and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to tamp down inflammatory rhetoric.
"We are very concerned about the outbreak of violence," Obama said at a news conference with visiting South Korean President Park Geun-Hye.
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms violence directed against innocent people, and believe that Israel has a right to maintain basic law and order and protect its citizens from knife attacks, and violence on the streets," he added.
"We also believe that it's important for both Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and Israeli elected officials, and President Abbas and other people in positions of power, to try to tamp down rhetoric that may feed violence or anger or misunderstanding," he said.
Issam Bakr from the Popular Resistance Committees involved in today's demonstrations in Ramallah told Middle East Eye that the protests would continue until their demands were met.
“This day of popular anger is to remind the world that the Palestinian people have a right to continue this form of resistance, it is also expressing our anger against the Israeli policies in the al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Quds [Jerusalem], which have left no other option for the Palestinians but to continue resisting these Israeli decisions," he said.
"This spark will not stop, and these youths will continue to protest all across Palestine refusing to negotiate until all of our national objectives are met."
A video produced by the Euro-Mediterranean Observer for Human Rights Monitor documents the abuses reportedly carried out by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza since the beginning of violence clashes in September:
Israeli forces shot and injured three Palestinian protesters with live fire the central occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem on Friday, while one young man was shot with a rubber-coated steel bullet in his eye and is in moderate to serious condition.
More than 500 young men and women showed up for the protest, which quickly turned into clashes with Israeli forces based behind a large garage-like door in Israel’s separation wall that hems the city. The protest, which began just after noon, lasted for more than eight hours, with demonstrators still clashing well after nightfall.
Protests in Bethlehem have taken place every day since 2 October, and have resulted in two deaths, one of which was a 13-year-old boy who was shot and killed by Israeli forces.
On Friday, the demonstration started with young men and women gathering on one of the main streets in the area in front of Israel’s separation wall. Protesters began throwing rocks at the wall, and Israeli forces immediately responded with the first shots of tear gas.
As the protest escalated young men gathered loose wood, trash cans and scrap metal, positioning the piles in the middle of the street to create makeshift barriers that protesters took cover behind on the front line of the clashes.
Other young men and women stationed themselves in a half constructed building near the separation wall, using the proximity to hurl stones and Molotov cocktails over the wall.
“That is the best position,” one young man, who, like most of the protesters wore, a checkered Palestinian scarf wrapped tightly around his head and face, said.
“Sometimes we have it and sometimes the soldiers take it, but right now we have it,” he said with a smile to his voice.
As other protesters lit tires on fire to create a smoke screen of thick billowing smoke on the main road, others in the half-constructed building dropped a Molotov cocktail on a pile of rubbish bellow, setting it ablaze.
Palestinian Authority firefighters soon responded, with every intention of putting out the fire, but protesters quickly put a stop to any attempts, screaming “go back!” at the first responders and throwing rocks at the two vehicles who quickly turned around and left the scene.
Israeli forces shot copious amounts of tear gas during the clashes, with dozens suffering from tear gas inhalation.
Medics at the scene told Middle East Eye that they’d treated more protesters for tear gas inhalation on Friday than they had on any other day since the start of October, when the daily clashes began.
As night fell, protesters carried at least a dozen tires and set them ablaze at the front line of the clashes, creating large piles of the burning rubber while yelling taunts at Israeli forces and screaming “God is great.”
The last of the demonstrators only left the streets when the rest of the tires burned out, with protesters promising they would be returning the next day.
Israeli soldiers and a settler shot dead two Palestinians who tried to stab Jews in separate incidents in annexed East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the army and police said.
In the first attack at just before 0600 GMT, 18-year-old Fadel al Qawasmeh tried to stab an Israeli settler in the centre of the West Bank city of Hebron.
The settler responded by opening fire on andk killing Qawasmeh the army said, adding that the Palestinian had tried but failed to wound the Jewish man.
Minutes later in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, a second Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces when he tried to stab a soldier at a checkpoint, police said.
He has yet to be identified.
Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour, has called on the international community to step in to protect Palestinian civilians in the occupied territories.
"The escalations mean that the conflict will become a religious one. We need to make Israel responsible for its illegal violations of international law and human rights law," Mansour told a special session of the UN Security Council in New York.
He went on to call for an end to "collective punishment" such as the closures around East Jerusalem and home demolitions, which are being carried out against Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks.
Mansour then urged the Security Council to honour past resolutions, which called for international protection for Palestinian citizens living under occupation, the disarmament of settlers and the deployment of international observers. The measures were approved in 1994 after the mass shooting at the Ibrahim mosque in Hebron in which 29 Palestinians were shot dead by a Jewish settler.
The Temporary International Presence in Hebron mission currently only monitors the situation in the flashpoint West Bank town.
Reports are emerging that a second Palestinian has been killed in Gaza following clashes on the border with Israeli security services. According to medical sources in Gaza, 90 people have also been injured - up from less than 30 only a few hours ago.
Photojournalist and MEE contributor Faiz Abu Rmeleh on the ground in East Jerusalem:
"Citizens are complaining about the collective punishment policy [of the closures and restrictions]. Not only because of the closure, but because they have led to huge traffic within neighbourhoods, especially in the mornings and the afternoons; the time when students, workers and employees go back home."
"Moreover, they say they are annoyed by the provocative inspection of individuals in the city [by Israeli security services]. Women and children have not been exempted from them. Individuals are getting stopped and their IDs are being taken. Men are being asked to raise their clothes and in some cases, take them off - in addition to the shoes - in front of other passers-by. This happens without taking the feelings [of those being searched] into account. Women’s bags are being strictly checked."
Russia Today is broadcasting scenes live from Bethlehem clashes.
Check out the coverage here:
Medical sources in Gaza told Maan news agency that 27 protestors have been injured in Gaza following clashes with Israeli forces.
An Israeli army spokesperson told Maan that hundreds of Palestinians had gathered near the border and had attempted to breach the buffer zone.
Protests have been rocking Bethlehem for the last few hours, with Israeli police firing tear gas and rubber bullets and protestors throwing stones.
Live fire has also been reported. Three protestors are said to have been injured.
Here are some images emerging on social media:
Israeli courts have ordered the continued detention of an Israeli teen, who went on a stabbing spree last week and injured four Palestinians in Dimona, a town in northern Israel.
The suspect’s attorney, told the court that his client had severe mental problems and that he should be submitted to further psychiatric observations.
After his arrest, the suspect whose name cannot be released because he is a minor, said that he had carried out the attack because “all Arabs are terrorists”.