Israeli, Palestinian ministers discuss West Bank violence in rare contact
JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and a senior Palestinian official discussed violence in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, with Gallant's office saying he offered reassurance about Israel's intention to crack down on Jewish settler riots.
Both the phone call and the announcement that it took place were unusual for Israel's religious-nationalist government and followed mounting expressions of U.S. concern about the situation in the West Bank, among areas where Palestinians, with foreign backing, seek to establish an independent state.
The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday "called on all parties to refrain from unilateral actions that further inflame tensions" and urged restraint to reduce tension and prevent further escalation.
During the Security Council meeting, Deputy U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood said Washington would work with Israel and the Palestinian Authority to lower tensions and restore trust to help create conditions for a return to talks.
"We call on all parties to refrain from unilateral actions, including settlement activity, evictions, and the demolition of Palestinian homes, terrorism and incitement to violence, all of which serve to only further inflame the situation," Wood said.
A Hamas shooting attack that killed four Israeli civilians outside a settlement in the Israeli-occupied territory sparked days of violent incursions into Palestinian villages and towns by groups of Jewish settlers. Twelve suspects have been arrested in the latter incidents, Israeli police said.
"Israel views with gravity the violence inflicted upon Palestinian civilians in recent days by extremist elements", Gallant's office quoted him as telling Hussein Al-Sheikh, an official in the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organisation.
"Israel will exact full penalty of the law from the rioters," Gallant added, according to the statement.
There was no immediate comment from Al-Sheikh's office.
Israeli forces, which have intensified raids against suspected Palestinian militants over the last 15 months, will continue to operate "anywhere required", Gallant said, while describing a calming of the West Bank as his common interest with Al-Sheikh.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, in a conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, said Israel would crack down on settler violence.
"Minister Cohen strongly condemned events in which citizens take the law into their own hands and said that the government will take all necessary measures," an Israeli foreign ministry statement said.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial, also spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday for the occasion of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, a statement from Herzog's office said.
Herzog "underlined his unequivocal denouncement of the recent assault on innocent Palestinians by extremists".
(Writing by Dan Williams; additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; editing by Frank Jack Daniel, Ed Osmond and Mark Heinrich)