At a press conference in Ramallah with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Wednesday, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is misleading when he says that he is committed to the status quo on the Temple Mount. Abbas said that the Temple Mount status quo should be returned to what it had been before the year 2000. He emphasized that the Palestinians are not interested in an escalation, but added that, regrettably, the religious conflict has already begun.
“We do not want it and we warn against the consequences,” Abbas told reporters. He called on Israel to observe scrupulously the rules guiding the Temple Mount. Abbas reiterated his “request from the UN to ensure international protection to the Palestinian people amid the ongoing wave of violence with Israel. A protection system to the Palestinian people is necessary amid the measures and practices they face from the violence and the terrorism of the occupation and the settlers, including the collective punishment,” said Abbas.
Ban called on both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work to defuse the deadly wave of violence. He said that he is deeply troubled by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad praising Arab attacks against Jews, and expressed to Abbas his concern over the “inflammatory rhetoric.”
In a meeting with Netanyahu Tuesday, Ban described the risk of letting the escalation grow “into a full religious conflict with potential regional implications.” He said that “security measures can be counterproductive if they are applied without special efforts to defuse the situation before people lose their lives.”