In Sunday’s talks Israeli and Palestinian officials agreed to “establish a mechanism to prevent and counter violence, provocations and inflammatory statements and actions,” which will report to a new meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh in April.
It did not provide further details on the mechanism.
According to the joint statement, participants in the talks “stressed the need for both Israelis and Palestinians to actively prevent any actions that would disrupt the sanctity of Jerusalem’s holy sites during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.”
Ramadan in previous years has occasionally seen clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians, particularly around Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, which Jews regard as the Temple Mount. Ramadan this year coincides with Judaism’s Passover and Christian Easter.
On Sunday, a Palestinian gunman opened fire on an Israeli couple in their car in Huwara, injuring the man.
The incident echoed a similar attack in the same city during the Aqaba talks last month, when a gunman from the Hamas militant group killed two settlers in a car. The settlers responded to that attack by setting fire to Palestinian homes and cars, killing at least one Palestinian, in what a senior army commander called a “massacre”.