Jordan hosted a meeting between top Israeli and Palestinian officials on Sunday to try to halt surging violence, an official said, as Washington and its Arab allies seek to defuse tensions that have led to concern of a wider escalation.
The discussions are part of stepped-up Jordanian diplomacy with Washington and Egypt to address violence, as anxiety mounts of escalation in the run-up to the holy Muslim month of Ramadan that begins in late March.
The meeting at the Red Sea port of Aqaba brought together top Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs for the first time in many years, officials said, and aimed to restore calm in Israel, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk is attending, along with Jordanian and Egyptian officials.
Underlining the challenges, the Palestinian Hamas group – which governs Gaza – criticised the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) for taking part, calling it a “stab in the back of the Palestinian people”.
A senior Jordanian official told Reuters the meeting aimed to restore calm while also giving Palestinians hope for a political future with an independent state on land Israel occupied in a 1967 war, including East Jerusalem.
“The objective is to reach an agreement on stopping all unilateral measures with a view to achieving a period of calm that would allow for confidence-building measures and lead to more political engagement,” the Jordanian official said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the talks.
“If the parties fail to reach agreement then the dynamics on the ground point to further escalation that will lead to violence that will hurt everybody,” the official added.
In an unsourced report, Israel’s Army Radio said the sides may discuss measures to boost Palestinian security forces in the West Bank as well as a possible curbing of Israeli settlement activity.
Israel’s Maariv newspaper quoted National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi as saying: “Discussions were held with the Americans about how to create a new atmosphere by ending the unilateral steps that were taken in the past few months. We are willing to (accept) that.”
In previous years, clashes have erupted between Israeli police and Palestinians around Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque at the height of the Ramadan fasting month that coincided with Judaism’s Passover and Christian Easter.
