By Qais Abu Samra
RAMALLAH
U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, currently in the West Bank city of Ramallah, voiced concern on Monday over what he described as "provocations" in occupied Jerusalem, hours after clashes erupted between Israeli police and Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Speaking to a press conference in Ramallah with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, Ban said he was "deeply concerned by repeated provocations at the holy sites in Jerusalem. These only inflame tensions and must stop."
Earlier in the day, Deputy Knesset Speaker Moshe Feiglin – under heavy Israeli police protection – had forced his way into the Al-Aqsa compound.
The intrusion came amid clashes between Muslim youth and Israeli police, the latter of which stormed the holy site in the early hours of the morning and tried to forcibly evict Palestinian worshippers from the area, eyewitnesses said.
Ban also reiterated his condemnation of Israel's ongoing construction of Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land, urging both sides to revive the stalled peace process.
"The situation can only be resolved as part of a broader political horizon that ends a nearly half century of [Israeli] occupation and leads towards a two-state solution with the state of Palestine coexisting with Israel in peace and security," he said.
"Time is not on the side of peace. We need to act immediately to prevent a deepening of an already unsustainable status quo," the U.N. chief asserted.
His visit to Ramallah comes one day after participants at an international donor conference on the Gaza Strip, held in Cairo on Sunday and attended by Ban, pledged to contribute a total of $5.4 billion to rebuilding the war-battered coastal enclave.
Describing the reconstruction of Gaza as an "important step," Ban said he had seen three wars in the Gaza Strip during his tenure as U.N. chief, going on to voice hope that the cycle of violence would be brought to an end.
Hamdallah, for his part, urged the international community to pressure Israel to allow Palestinian institutions to "do their jobs" in all Palestinian territories, whether in the West Bank, Gaza Strip or East Jerusalem.
"The Gaza reconstruction program will be useless if the crossings are not open," the Palestinian premier said.
The Palestinian government, he said, had agreed with all Palestinian factions on the mechanism for rebuilding Gaza.
"The Palestinian government will be in charge of the process," he added.
Ban is due to go to the Gaza Strip on Tuesday to "to listen directly to the people of Gaza."
In July and August, Israel carried out a 51-day military onslaught on the Palestinian territory with the stated aim of staunching Palestinian rocket fire.
The offensive left more than 2,150 Palestinians dead and some 11,000 injured and destroyed thousands of homes and vast swathes of Gaza's infrastructure.
Representatives of 50 countries, including 30 foreign ministers, attended Sunday's donor conference, along with the representatives of several regional and international organizations.
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