Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Friday he was freezing contacts with Israel over new security measures at a highly sensitive Jerusalem holy site, after deadly clashes erupted earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
Abbas said in a speech that the freeze would stay in place until Israel lifted the measures at the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, which Jews refer to as the Temple Mount.<\/p>\n
\u2018I, on behalf of the Palestinian leadership, announce… a freeze of all contacts with the occupation state on all levels until Israel commits to cancelling all the measures against our Palestinian people in general and Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa mosque in particular,\u2019 Abbas said to applause from Palestinian officials.<\/p>\n
Abbas called the measures \u2018falsely presented as a security measure to take control over Al-Aqsa mosque\u2019.<\/p>\n
It was unclear if the move would apply to the quiet security coordination that exists between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, widely seen as having helped prevent a wider outbreak of violence in recent years.<\/p>\n
The two sides have a range of contacts on various other issues, with recent deals announced related to water and electricity.<\/p>\n
Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts have however been at a standstill since a US-led initiative collapsed in 2014, though US President Donald Trump has been seeking ways to restart talks.<\/p>\n
Abbas\u2019s speech came after three Palestinians were killed and several hundred wounded Friday in clashes between protesters and Israeli forces over the new security measures at the holy site.<\/p>\n
The unrest followed a decision by Israeli ministers not to order the removal of metal detectors erected at entrances to the compound, which includes the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, following an attack nearby a week ago that killed two policemen.<\/p>\n
In anticipation of protests on Friday, Israeli police barred men under 50 from entering the Old City in annexed east Jerusalem for prayers, while all women were allowed in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Friday he was freezing contacts with Israel over new security measures at a highly sensitive Jerusalem holy site, after deadly clashes erupted earlier in the day. Abbas said in a speech that the freeze would stay in place until Israel lifted the measures at the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[590],"class_list":{"0":"post-4655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-palestinian-president-freezes-israel-contact-over-holy-site-dispute"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}