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An Israeli security official warned on Sunday that the volatile situation in the occupied West Bank could further deteriorate after Palestinian Authority (AP) President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to halt security cooperation with Israel.
"The situation in the West Bank can deteriorate to a dangerous level, if the PA halts security cooperation with Israel," the official told Israel General Radio on condition of anonymity.
He said no change had occurred as far as security cooperation with Palestinian security agencies was concerned so far.
The official added that Palestinian security agencies had arrested 200 members of the Palestinian faction Hamas since the signing of a cease-fire deal in Gaza in late August, bringing to an end 51 days of Israeli aggressions against the blockaded Palestinian territory.
Speaking at a meeting of Arab foreign ministers at the Arab League in Cairo on Saturday, Abbas threatened to suspend cooperation with Israel on security matters.
He said he would especially do this if the United Nations Security Council did not approve a resolution setting November 2016 as a deadline for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Abbas added that he would submit the draft resolution, which had been endorsed by the Arab League, for the members of the Security Council to vote on it soon.
The 1993 Washington-brokered Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority made it necessary for the latter to prevent attacks on Israel from the occupied territories and exchange information on security matters.
Abbas had previously described the PA-Israel security coordination as "sacred" and vowed to prevent a Palestinian intifada (Arabic for uprising) against the Israeli occupation.
Tension has been running high in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank since late October, when Israel briefly closed the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex after an extremist rabbi was injured in a drive-by shooting in West Jerusalem.
Frequent intrusions by Israeli officials and Jewish settlers into East Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound – along with fresh restrictions on Muslim worshippers at the site – have also served to anger Palestinians.
Several Israelis have been killed and several others injured in a spate of assaults by Palestinians, both inside Israel and in the occupied territories, since the compound's closure.
Over the past 27 years, thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis have been killed in two major Palestinian uprisings against Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land.
The Second Intifada, which erupted in September 2000, was triggered by a visit to East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque complex by controversial Israeli politician Ariel Sharon.
The uprising left some 4,000 Palestinians dead and more than 50,000 injured before petering out in 2005. Over a thousand Israelis were killed over the same period.
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