Hurried Huddle in Aqaba Seeks to Curb Intifada

GAZA (Dispatches) --
Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip voiced anger over a meeting between top Israeli and Palestinian officials hosted by Jordan on Sunday.
In Gaza, women and masked men protested against the meeting in Aqaba as Washington and its Arab allies seek to curb a wider escalation of the Palestinian uprising.
Hamas spokesperson in Gaza Hazem Qassem, condemned the meeting.
“We strongly condemn the Palestinian Authority’s participation in the security meeting with the Zionist occupation in Aqaba. This meeting aims to curb the Intifada and the revolution of our Palestinian people in the West Bank and Al-Quds,” he told Reuters.
“This participation means that the security coordination between the occupation and the (Palestinian) Authority is very strong and it is not suspended like the Authority announced. This meeting is against the national unity and it represents only some powerful leadership in the Palestinian Authority,” he added.
Qassem said what is required is to hold a regional Arab summit to support our people and the resistance.
Last month, the Palestinian Authority said it had suspended its security coordination with the occupying regime of Israel after Zionist forces martyred nine Palestinians, including an elderly woman, during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
On Saturday armed and masked fighters took to the streets of Jenin, joining several Palestinian factions from armed groups within mainstream Fatah to Hamas and Islamic Jihad who urged the Palestinian Authority to pull out of the meeting, calling it a U.S.-led plot against Palestinian aspirations.
The discussions in Aqaba were part of stepped-up Jordanian collaboration with Washington and Egypt to put the brakes on one of the biggest surge of uprising in years, with

concern building of further escalation as the holy Muslim month of Ramadan approaches.

The meeting at the Red Sea port of Aqaba brought together top Zionist and Palestinian security chiefs for the first time in many years, officials said.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s Middle East adviser Brett McGurk was attending, along with Jordanian and Egyptian officials.

Jordan’s King Abdullah told McGurk that efforts should be intensified to bring “calm and reduce escalation” in Palestinian territories, state media reported.

At least 62 Palestinians, including gunmen and civilians, have been martyred this year, the Palestinian health ministry has said. Ten Zionists died in Palestinian attacks in the same period, Israel’s foreign ministry says.

“We ask the Palestinian Authority forces not to fight with us or on our behalf. We have one demand which is not to stab the Palestinian people in the back and to leave us resist to alone,” said a masked Palestinian fighter during the protest in Jenin.

Two Zionists Killed in Palestinian Shooting

On Sunday, a Palestinian man killed two Zionist settlers in their car in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, Israeli officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the incident. Medics said the casualties near Hawara, an area that sees regular friction between Palestinians and settlers, were men in their twenties.

A settlements spokesperson said they were residents of Har Bracha, a settlement 8 km (5 miles) away. The occupying regime’s military said it was pursuing the assailant.

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Hurried Huddle in Aqaba Seeks to Curb Intifada