The UN Middle East peace envoy urged Israel and the Palestinians on Wednesday to calm surging violence in the occupied West Bank, a day after the latest Israeli raid killed six people.
“We are in the midst of a cycle of violence that must be stopped immediately,” Tor Wennesland said in a statement.
“The Security Council has spoken with one voice, calling on the parties to observe calm and restraint, and to refrain from provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric.”
The call came a day after intense fighting during an Israeli raid in the flashpoint northern West Bank city of Jenin, in which the soldiers killed six Palestinians, including a member of Hamas accused of killing two Israeli settlers last month.
Wennesland said he was “alarmed” at the violence, which the army said included soldiers launching shoulder-fired rockets amid ferocious gunfire.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, called the use of rockets in Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday an act of “all-out war”, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
The Jenin raid was the latest in a string of deadly military operations in the Palestinian territory, which Israel has occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967.
Among the six killed was Abdel Fatah Hussein Khroushah, 49. The Israeli army said he was a “terrorist operative” suspected of killing two Israeli settlers in the Palestinian town of Huwara on February 26.—AFP
