If 20 years ago Israelis and Palestinians came to Aqaba to agree on a Road Map that would lead them to the peace agreement, this Sunday they did so to avoid a new violent escalation in a security summit unprecedented in the last decade. A less ambitious, but critical objective, given the spiral of violence in the last 11 months that has had a new chapter today.
While Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian, Egyptian and American representatives have met in Jordan to agree on agreements to reduce tension, a Palestinian has killed two Israelis on a road in the northern West Bank. After firing 12 rounds at close range in his car, he fled.
The rapprochements reached in Aqaba ranged from the Israeli commitment not to approve new construction in the colonies in the next four months, although the Jordanian announcement was qualified by Israel hours later, to the creation of a joint commission to study the resumption of construction. security cooperation between the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Israel. In addition to increased action by Palestinian security forces to reduce Israeli incursions against militias in the West Bank.
The two Jewish victims -Yagel (19) and Halel Yaniv (21)- were brothers and inhabitants of the Har Braja colony, about eight kilometers away.
Hawara, the site of the attack and whose crossing is widely used by Israelis and Palestinians, is located south of the city of Nablus where last Wednesday eight militants and three Palestinian civilians died in a raid carried out by Israeli soldiers that led to armed clashes with troops Islamic Jihad and Lions Den.
According to testimonies cited by Haaretz, the attacker was wearing a T-shirt with the inscription of this small armed group created a few months ago in Nablus. "No matter how great the pain that fills Nablus is, the occupation will suffer it twice as much," he warned, promising revenge for the death of six of his people in the armed conflict during the aforementioned incursion.
After the attack, young settlers sought revenge in the Palestinian town of Hawara by burning down a house (its occupants were rescued by Israeli soldiers) and several shops and throwing stones at some cars.
The Islamist group Hamas applauded the armed attack and justified it as "a response to Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people such as the massacre in Nablus."
In the Israeli government coalition, requests for a "strong hand against Palestinian terror" increased by ministers who were successful in the elections on November 1, among other reasons, due to their electoral promises after the wave of attacks last year under the previous government, formed by parties of the left, center, right and one Arab.
The finance minister and ultranationalist leader Bezalel Smotrish has demanded that the head of government, Benjamin Netanyahu, abandon the "immediate" delegation sent to the summit in Jordan. "Calm will be obtained only when the Tsahal (Army) hits terrorism mercilessly," he noted. In the afternoon, he backed away from any commitment to "freeze" construction in the settlements as noted in Jordan's final statement.
Netanyahu has kept the delegation at the summit, but to calm the spirits of the most radical wing of his coalition to the ministerial approval of the proposal for the so-called "law on the death penalty for terrorists."
This initiative, which still needs to be approved by Parliament, does not have the support of the Israeli security organizations considering that most of the perpetrators of the attacks decide to carry them out knowing that they do not have much chance of surviving their attacks. In other words, the death penalty will not serve to deter those who aspire to be a "martyr."
The Aqaba meeting - called emergency under pressure from the Biden Administration to avoid a situation similar to that of more than 20 years ago when the Second Intifada broke out - has ended with the agreement not to take unilateral measures with explosive potential in the face of the start of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, which once again coincides with the Jewish Passover.
A date, within a month, always sensitive but this year even more after the death of 61 Palestinians (mostly militants, perpetrators of attacks or participants in riots) and 13 Israelis (12 civilians and one police officer) in the last two months .
The identity of the participants in Aqaba reflects the importance of this meeting. On behalf of the PNA, the head of the Intelligence services, Majed Faraj, the general secretary of the PLO executive committee, Hussein Al Sheikh, and the diplomatic adviser to President Abu Mazen, Majdi al Jaldi. Israel, for its part, was represented by the national security adviser, Tsaji Hanegbi, the head of the internal secret service, Ronen Bar and the director general of the Foreign Ministry, Ronen Levy.
According to Israeli sources before the attack this Sunday, the Army would reduce its incursions in Nablus and Jenin, which always end in intense armed clashes, limiting itself only to stopping the so-called "bombs about to explode", alluding to commandos suspected of planning terrorist attacks. immediate way.
Faced with Palestinian criticism, including within Abu Mazen's Al Fatah, for participating in the meeting with Israel that Hamas defined as a "summit of shame" and a "rupture of the Palestinian national consensus", the ANP affirms that the objective was to start the Israeli commitment to cease its military incursions and its activity in the colonies in the territory occupied in the war of 1967.
After announcing the construction of 9,500 houses in the colonies in the West Bank and the regularization of nine old illegal enclaves two weeks ago, Netanyahu promised the US not to take similar measures in the coming months.
The veteran prime minister, under strong internal and external criticism due to the proposed reform of the judiciary, supports the measures recommended by the Israeli security organizations to reduce tension with the Palestinians. But, for the first time in his long political career, he is depending on two ultra-nationalist parties (outright opposed to any cessation of new house building in the colonies) to stay in power. In the evening, Hanegbi clarified that "there is no freeze on construction or any limitation on the actions of the Army."
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
