Jordan announced this Sunday that the Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to de-escalate and avoid further violence after an unusual high-level meeting also attended by representatives from the United States and Egypt. The actual implementation of this compromise is uncertain, however, as both the hardline wing of the Israeli government and the Palestinian Hamas movement were quick to reject its outcome. While the meeting was taking place in the Jordanian city of Aqaba, a Palestinian killed two Israelis in a shootout in a town near Nablus in the north of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers later attacked several Palestinians and attacked some homes. according to a local human rights group.
In the statement released at the end of the meeting in the Red Sea city, Jordan explained that the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are committed to ending unilateral action in the coming months. In this sense, according to the source, the former have accepted four months of freeze discussions on new settlements and six months of legalization of incipient settlements inhabited by some settlers who illegally build their homes as outposts for the arrival of other colonists, much more numerous . According to Jordan, Israel has also agreed to maintain the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem, including the Esplanade of Mosques in the Old City, which is considered the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam and remains under symbolic Jordanian custody. The parties present at the meeting also agreed to meet again in Egypt in March. The United States sees the meeting as a starting point, but has indicated there is still work to be done in the coming weeks.
Shortly after Jordan released the statement, however, Israel’s finance minister, the far-right Bezalel Smotrich, tweeted that he was unaware of the agreements in Aqaba and that in any case “there will be no standstill in settlement construction and development.” , not even for a day.” Smotrich recalled that decisions on the planning and construction of settlements have been his responsibility since last week. Similarly, the country’s Minister of National Security, Ultra Itmar Ben Gvir, has asserted in a message on the same social network that “what was in Jordan (if it was) will stay in Jordan”.
For its part, Hamas has condemned the participation of the Palestinian Authority in the meeting. The movement that governs the Gaza Strip believes the deal departs from the Palestinian national consensus and represents an attempt to cover up and give the green light to Israeli crimes. In a statement of its own, Hamas has called on the PA to end its coordination on security issues with the Israeli security forces, urging it to halt this type of negotiation process, which it considers useless and absurd.
While the meeting was taking place in Aqaba, a Palestinian attacker killed two Israeli brothers who were sitting in their car in a West Bank town near the city of Nablus. Following news of the attack, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian residents in at least two towns in the same area, burning and destroying vehicles and throwing stones at some houses, local human rights group Yesh Din has documented.
These talks in Jordan came after the Israeli army killed 11 Palestinians, including four civilians, and wounded hundreds last Wednesday in a raid on the city of Nablus, the deadliest raid in the occupied West Bank since 2005. The Israeli army bartered in the early morning Thursday morning hours also limited attacks. Since the beginning of this year, Israeli forces have killed more than 60 Palestinians, including civilians and some of them children, while Palestinian attackers have killed 10 Israelis.
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