Hamas Leader Calls for "Resistance in All of Its Forms, Armed or Not" in Order to "Confront the Settlers and Defend the Muslim Holy Places"
Palestinians say the attacks stem from a lack of hope for gaining independence after years of failed peace efforts.
Rights groups have alleged that Israeli troops have used excessive force against Palestinians, in some cases shooting and killing suspected attackers who the groups say could have been arrested.
November 4, 2015
AFP -
Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called on all Palestinian groups
Wednesday to form a unified leadership of the current wave of violence
against Israel, which he called an intifada, or uprising.
Speaking
by video-link from Qatar, the head of the Islamist group urged other
organisations to join "an operational leadership of the intifada... to
put in place an agreed strategy for common struggle covering all
options."
Bloodshed that erupted at the start of October has claimed the lives of nine Israelis, 70 Palestinians and an Arab Israeli.
Much
of the violence has involved Palestinians attacking Israelis with
knives, or ploughing into them with vehicles, and about half the
Palestinians fatalities consist of attackers who have been shot dead.
Neither
Israeli or Palestinian leaders are calling the current wave of violence
an intifada, but there are concerns on both sides that it could
escalate into one.
In the
first two intifadas, in 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, thousands of people
were killed and many more wounded in near daily violence.
Meshaal
called for "resistance in all of its forms, armed or not" in order to
"confront the settlers and defend the Muslim holy places."
Simmering
tensions boiled over in September regarding the status of the Al-Aqsa
mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, a site holy to both
Muslims and Jews, before spiralling into a series of attacks from
October 1.
Palestinians
accuse Israel of seeking to change the rules governing the compound, but
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted he will not alter a
status quo that forbids Jews from praying there.
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