by Our Foreign Desk

VIOLENCE soared in Israel and occupied Palestine yesterday as US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed to have brokered a deal that might end the clashes.

Mr Kerry said Israel had agreed to affirm the status of Jordan as formal custodian of the site known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, and that both countries had agreed to video monitoring of the inside of the al-Aqsa mosque there.

The agreement would supposedly qualm fears among Palestinians that Israel plans to change the status quo at the mosque.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the cameras, saying they would refute claims that Tel Aviv is seeking to expand Jewish presence at the site — but Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said they would be used to track and arrest Arabs.

At the same time the United States said it would cut aid to the Palestinian Authority by $80 million (£52m), indicating that Washington blames Palestine for the unrest — though at least 55 Palestinians have now been killed since the start of the month in comparison with 10 Israeli fatalities.

Among the latest victims was a young woman — a schoolgirl according to some witnesses — who was shot in Hebron, a Palestinian West Bank city partially colonised by heavily armed Israeli settlements.

Soldiers said she was carrying a knife, though no other witnesses mentioned this. The same accusation was levelled at a Palestinian teenage boy, Ahmad Muhammad Said Kamil, who was shot dead on Saturday at a checkpoint north of Jenin.

A young Palestinian man working in fields in Wadi Sair, near Hebron, was seriously wounded when shot by a settler who claimed to be the victim of a stabbing attack.

The mayor of Sair said that after the incident Israeli soldiers raided the village, shooting and injuring seven Palestinians, one of whom was shot in the eye and in critical condition. Israeli forces said they had closed off the area.

A settler attack was blamed for the torching of a car and spray-painted messages reading: “Die, you Arabs” in al-Tuba village, south of Jerusalem, while leader of the Palestinian National Initiative Party Mustafa Barghouti was attacked on Saturday by unknown assailants but not seriously injured.