JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The United States, European Union and the United Nations have issued unusually stern criticism of Israel, provoking a sharp response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and raising Palestinians’ hopes of steps against their neighbor.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday described Israel’s settlements as “provocative acts” that raised questions about its commitment to a two-state solution, nearly 50 years after occupying lands the Palestinians seek for a state.

Ban also laid some of the blame for four months of stabbings and car rammings by Palestinians at Israel’s door, saying “as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism”.

Netanyahu’s response was quick and furious. Ban’s remarks “give a tailwind to terrorism”, he said, and ignore the fact “Palestinian murderers do not want to build a state”.

“The U.N. lost its neutrality and moral force a long time ago,” he added, singling Ban out for personal criticism.

While terse words between Israel and the United Nations are nothing new, Israel’s closest allies, the United States and the European Union, have publicly expressed their own frustration with the policies of Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

Speaking at a security conference last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro questioned how equitably justice is applied in the occupied West Bank, saying: “At times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians.”

That, too, drew an angry response from Netanyahu. Shapiro later said he regretted the timing of his remarks, made on the day an Israeli mother of six, stabbed to death by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement, was buried.

The European Union’s policy of labeling products made in Israeli settlements has provoked similar anger from officials, while Sweden’s foreign minister was branded an anti-Semite after calling for an independent investigation into Israel’s efforts to quell the current wave of violence.

NOT SO RESOLVED

The criticism, particularly about the settlements, where some 550,000 Jews live in around 250 communities scattered across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has raised Palestinian hopes that world powers might finally be minded to support a U.N. resolution condemning Israel’s policy outright.

“We are continuing our contacts with the international community… and will go to the Security Council for a resolution against the colonial settlement enterprise,” Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, said last week.

The last attempt at such a resolution failed in 2011 after the United States vetoed it, saying it harmed the chances for peace. The feeling among Palestinian diplomats now is that the United States may be less inclined to veto given the absence of peace talks and the depth of U.S. frustration with Israel.

Israeli diplomats are also wary of that possibility.

“It’s always a risk and we are extremely attentive to it,” said Emmanuel Nahshon, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman.

“There has indeed been a lot of criticism of Israel recently, but I don’t know whether that necessarily translates into a U.N. resolution.”

He said there had been “anti-Israeli resolutions” at the United Nations in the past, regardless of developments on the ground.

The Palestinians hope France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, might sponsor such a resolution, but it is unclear whether the French have the appetite for such a course.

“If the French want to play a useful and positive role in the Middle East, they can’t stand behind an initiative that is against Israel and only antagonizes us,” said Nahshon.

Even if a resolution were to be drafted, diplomats played down its prospects. While President Barack Obama may have a fractious relationship with Netanyahu, he is unlikely to want to isolate Israel in a U.S. election year, with Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton keen to draw the Jewish vote.

“The logic might seem to be there, but when it comes to it, the United States isn’t going to let such a resolution pass,” said a European diplomat who has worked at the United Nations.

(Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Two Palestinians were shot dead after stabbing two Israeli women on Monday in the West Bank, police said, in an emerging pattern of assaults inside Jewish settlements in the occupied territory.

One of the women was in critical condition and the other sustained moderate wounds after the attack in Beit Horon, a settlement on a highway that links Jerusalem and coastal Tel Aviv and cuts through the foothills of the West Bank.

“The two terrorists were killed by security forces,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, adding that two explosive devices were found at the scene.

It was the latest incident in an almost four-month long surge of violence that has raised concern of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided. It followed three stabbings last week inside settlements carried out by Palestinian teenagers, according to Israeli authorities.

Many of the attacks on Israelis at the start of the bloodshed occurred in Jerusalem and other cities. But much of the violence has shifted to the West Bank, where settlers live adjacent to Palestinian population centers.

On Saturday, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, who according to an Israeli policewoman “had fought with her family and left home with a knife and intended to die”, tried to stab a security guard at a West Bank settlement and was then shot dead by him.

Since the start of October, Israeli forces have killed at least 151 Palestinians, 97 of them assailants according to authorities. Most the others have died in violent protests. Almost daily stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks by Palestinians have killed 25 Israelis and a U.S. citizen.

Many of the Palestinian assailants have been teenagers. The identities and ages of the alleged attackers on Monday were not immediately released.

On Jan. 17, an Israeli mother of six was stabbed to death at her home in a West Bank settlement and a 15-year-old Palestinian was arrested for the attack. A day later, Israeli troops shot and wounded a 17-year-old Palestinian who had stabbed and wounded a pregnant Israeli woman in a settlement.

The bloodshed has been fueled by various factors including frustration over the 2014 collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the growth of Jewish settlements on land Palestinians seek for an independent state.

Palestinian leaders have said that with no breakthrough on the horizon, desperate youngsters see no future ahead. Israel says young Palestinians are being incited to violence by their leaders and Islamist groups that call for Israel’s destruction.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel plans to appropriate a large tract of agricultural land in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Army Radio said on Wednesday, a move that has angered Palestinians and is almost certain to draw international criticism.

The report said the land, covering 380 acres, was in the fertile Jordan Valley close to Jericho, an area where Israel already has many settlement farms built on land Palestinians seek for their own state.

The appropriation, which Army Radio said would be announced shortly but was not immediately confirmed by the Israeli Defense Ministry which administers the West Bank, comes at a time of increased international condemnation of settlement policy.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, described Israel’s reported move as a violation of international law. She challenged the international community to hold Israel to account.

“Israel is stealing land specially in the Jordan Valley under the pretext it wants to annex it,” she told Reuters. “This should be a reason for a real and effective intervention by the international community to end such a flagrant and grave aggression which kills all chances of peace.”

The report said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon had already signed off on the appropriation and that technical details were being finalised ahead of a declaration expected soon.

The Defense Ministry declined to comment.

The land, already partly farmed by Jewish settlers in an area under Israeli civilian and military control, is situated near the northern tip of the Dead Sea.

For years, Israel has drawn intense criticism for its settlement activities. Most countries regard the policy as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Palestinians want to form an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as the capital. The last talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a so-called “two-state solution” broke down in April 2014.

On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby reiterated the United States’ opposition to Israel’s settlement building, which usually begins with land seizures.

“We remain deeply concerned about Israel’s current policy on settlements, including construction, planning, and retroactive legalizations,” he said.

Hagit Ofran, a member of the anti-settlement group Peace Now, said that unlike previous Israeli governments that largely avoided land seizures, Netanyahu has carried out several appropriations during his time in office.

“Since 2011, moves of this sort by Netanyahu have only drawn greater international criticism from Israel’s closest allies,” she told Reuters, describing it as a “diplomatic catastrophe”.

In August 2014, soon after Hamas militants kidnapped and killed three Jewish teenagers, Israel appropriated some 988 acres in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem, a move Peace Now said was the biggest in 30 years.

Since Oct. 1, when the latest upsurge in violence began, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and shootings have killed 25 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. At least 148 Palestinians have been killed, 94 of whom Israel has described as assailants. Most of the others died during violent demonstrations.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli troops shot and wounded a Palestinian teenager who stabbed a pregnant Israeli woman in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Monday, amid signs of Palestinians stepping up attacks on Israelis inside Jewish settlements.

The military ordered Palestinian laborers to leave their workplaces in some settlements as the violence spread from streets and bus stops in the West Bank and Israel to within the usually well-protected Israeli enclaves.

Hospital officials said the woman stabbed in Tekoa, a settlement near Bethlehem, was in moderate condition at a Jerusalem hospital, with the fetus unharmed. The stabber, 17, was in serious condition after being shot in the leg. He was being treated at another Jerusalem hospital.

The stabbing was the second at a Jewish settlement in as many days. On Sunday, an assailant stabbed to death a mother of six at her home in the southern West Bank. The attacker is still being sought.

The wave of Palestinian violence, now in its fourth month, has been fueled by various factors including frustration over the 2014 collapse of peace talks and the growth of Jewish settlements on land Palestinians seek for a future state.

Also stoking the strife has been Muslim opposition to increased Jewish visits to Jerusalem’s al Aqsa mosque complex, which is one of the holiest sites in Islam and is revered in Judaism as the location of two ancient biblical temples.

The Israeli military ordered all Palestinian laborers who work in the large Gush Etzion bloc of settlements in the southern West Bank to quit their places of employment after the Tekoa attack. Some were seen being driven away in the back of a large dump truck.

“In light of situation assessments and following recent terror attacks … Palestinian workers have been instructed to leave (Gush Etzion) communities,” an army statement said.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, condemned the recent stabbings as “barbaric acts of terrorism” but also criticized Israel for not doing enough to stop violence by far-right Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities, too much vigilantism goes unchecked, and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law – one for Israelis and another for Palestinians,” he said at a security conference.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement later rejecting Shapiro’s comments, calling them “unacceptable and untrue. Israel enforces the law on Israelis and on Palestinians”.

Analysts said increased tensions could prompt settlers who have a strong voice in Israel’s right-wing government to lobby for tougher travel and employment restrictions on Palestinians, a step that could in turn further inflame the atmosphere.

“The more settlers feel vulnerable to such brutal attacks, their influential leaders would increase their pressure on the government to more sharply separate Palestinians from settlers,” Ofer Zalzberg of the International Crisis Group think tank said.

“If (the) past is precedent, such separation, notably the allocation of some West Bank roads exclusively to settlers by diverting Palestinian traffic to secondary tortuous ones, would further radicalize Palestinians.”

On Sunday, Daphne Meir, a hospital nurse, was stabbed to death as she tried to fend off an attacker who broke into her home. Neighbors in the settlement of Otniel said they heard one of her daughters screaming for help.

Netanyahu promised that police would find the attacker and bring him to justice. He added that Israel would bolster the settlements’ security, although he did not elaborate.

The latest bloodshed occurred a few days after Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon declared that grassroots Palestinian violence was on the wane.

Since Oct. 1 when the upsurge in violence began, Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and shootings have killed 25 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. At least 148 Palestinians have been killed, 94 of whom Israel has described as assailants. Most of the others died during violent demonstrations.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich)