BICOM

Disturbances continued in the West Bank for a third straight day, as tension preceded a regional visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry scheduled for Monday. Kerry is believed to be keen to establish confidence-building measures on both sides as part of an effort to kick-start talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

However, violent incidents were reported yesterday at multiple locations across the West Bank, contributing to a tense atmosphere in the region. Two Palestinians who were killed on Tuesday after Israeli soldiers opened fire having been attacked with petrol bombs, were buried yesterday in their home village of Anabta. The main flash point though was in Hebron where the funeral of Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh took place. The Hamas member was serving a life sentence for his part in a plot to blow up a Jerusalem restaurant and died of cancer in an Israeli hospital earlier this week. Palestinian leaders blamed his death on Israeli negligence. A reported fifteen thousand people attended Abu Hamdiyeh’s funeral procession yesterday, which was followed by continual clashes in Hebron between around three hundred Palestinians and Israeli security forces.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Israel was responsible for the violence and is “seeking to create confusion and chaos in the Palestinian territories.” However, Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed disappointment at “the Palestinian Authority using the language of confrontation, instead of the language of reconciliation and peace.”

The Foreign Office released a statement yesterday saying, “We are deeply concerned about the deaths of two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank and reports of the Israeli military being attacked with firebombs” and went on to “urge the parties to take steps towards de-escalation and to exercise restraint.”