|
 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was cautiously
optimistic there was a way to defuse tensions after holding four
hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in
Berlin on Thursday.
Israeli authorities also lifted restrictions on Friday that had
banned men aged under 40 from using the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque
compound in Jerusalem's walled Old City - a move seen as a bid to
ease Muslim anger.
Police said Friday prayers there ended quietly. But in the West Bank
and Gaza, Palestinian medical officials said 45 people were wounded
by gunfire, including a 13-year-old critically injured near Ramallah
and three photographers near the Gaza border.
The Israeli military said it was unaware that journalists had been
hurt and that soldiers had fired warning shots in the air before
firing on leading instigators trying to breach the Gaza security
fence.
Earlier, a 16-year-old Palestinian stabbed and wounded an Israeli
soldier in the West Bank, before being shot and wounded by other
troops, the Israeli military said.
 One of the worst waves of street violence in years was triggered in
part by Palestinian anger over what they see as Jewish encroachment
on the compound, Islam's third holiest site and also revered by Jews
as the location of two ancient temples.
Palestinians are also frustrated by the failure of numerous rounds
of peace talks to secure them an independent state in East
Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel captured in
the 1967 Middle East war.
The last round of negotiations collapsed in 2014.
More than 50 Palestinians, half of them assailants, have been shot
dead by Israelis at the scene of attacks or during protests in the
West Bank and Gaza since Oct. 1. Nine Israelis have been stabbed or
shot dead by Palestinians.
Stabbings and shootings mostly have been carried out by "lone wolf"
attackers, many of them teenagers.
Palestinian factions, including the militant group Hamas and the
Fatah movement of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, had called
for Day of Rage rallies after Friday prayers, though protests were
less intense than in previous weeks.
"By the blood of their sons, Jerusalem and the West Bank will write
the end of the occupation," said Ismail Rudwan, an official from
Hamas, which controls Gaza.
STATUS QUO
Kerry was expected to meet in Amman on Saturday with Abbas and
Jordan's King Abdullah, who has a role as a custodian of the Muslim
sacred sites in Jerusalem.
One of Kerry's goals is to reinforce the status quo at al-Aqsa under
which non-Muslim prayer has long been banned there. Netanyahu says
Israel has not changed the status quo and has no intention of doing
so.
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The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators, met in Vienna on Friday
and urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to tone down their
rhetoric and calm tensions.
A statement after the meeting - attended by Kerry, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini
and the U.N. Middle East coordinator Nickolay Mladenov - called on
Israel "to work together with Jordan to uphold the status quo at the
holy sites in Jerusalem in both word and practice".
An Israeli government source said Netanyahu told Kerry in their
meeting that, to curb violence, Abbas and King Abdullah should
publicly declare the status quo had not changed.
A spokesman for Netanyahu would not confirm the prime minister had
made such a demand.
Palestinians are also fuming at what they see as excessive use of
force by Israeli police and soldiers, with many attackers shot dead
at the scene when they might have been detained.
One Israeli was killed by soldiers who mistook him for an attacker,
and an Eritrean migrant was beaten and shot dead by a crowd of
Israelis who thought he had taken part in a shooting.
Israeli rights group B'tselem on Friday distributed security camera
footage that appeared to show Israeli soldiers kicking a Palestinian
man and using a rifle to beat him while he was lying on a storage
room floor, before dragging him outside.
The Israeli military said in response that the event was being
examined and a preliminary inquiry showed the soldiers had acted in
accordance to the army's expected standards.
B'tselem said it occurred on Oct 6. in the West Bank, near where
clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops were taking place,
and that the soldiers then arrested the man. The military described
the clashes as a "violent riot".
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Nidal
al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Shadia Nasralla in Vienna; Writing by Maayan
Lubell; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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