Arab League seeks end to Israel's violent 'escalation'

Arab foreign ministers searched on Monday for ways to halt what one called Israel's "dangerous escalation" of violence against Palestinians.
Weeks of knife, gun and car assaults by Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank have left 74 Palestinians dead, around half of them alleged attackers.

Ten Israelis and one Arab Israeli have also been killed, and violence has spread to the Gaza Strip as well.

Attacks against Jews began in early October as tensions over the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem erupted.

The compound is the third holiest site in Islam, as well as being the holiest site in Judaism which venerates it as the Temple Mount.

"This emergency meeting comes with the dangerous escalation by the Israeli government, the settlers, the Jewish extremist groups, and the Israeli forces in the blessed city of Jerusalem," United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan told the meeting, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

He chaired the gathering of the 22-member bloc, and said the Palestinian issue is key to peace and security in the region.

"We gather today to take a decision about what we can do to stop these crimes and violations," the UAE minister said.
Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi urged the UN Security Council and others to work towards an end to the conflict, SPA reported.

The meeting came on the eve of the Fourth Summit of Arab and South American countries, to be held in the Saudi capital on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir spoke of a "convergence of positions" between countries of the two regions on many issues and commended the Latin nations' "positive stance" on the Palestinian issue.

The summit between the Arab League states and 12 nations from South America will be their fourth meeting since 2005.

The summits were an initiative of Brazil's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Jubeir told a pre-summit meeting that the previous three gatherings tried to develop trade, investment and transport links.

There remain "promising opportunities for collaboration", he said, according to a written text of his speech.

Two South American nations, Argentina and Brazil, belong to the Group of 20 world's largest economies, as does Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom and its Gulf neighbours pump much of the world's oil, but Brazil and Venezuela are also major producers.

There are also cultural ties, as Chile hosts some 350,000 Palestinian immigrants and their descendants who have settled there over the past century.

Recent immigration has brought more than 2,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the war in their homeland to Brazil since 2011.

The figure is far more than for any other Latin American state, although some pledged open doors and Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said 20,000 were welcome in his country.

Maduro, however, is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is facing rebel forces supported by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

Source: AFP