The United Nations warned Wednesday that a deadly surge in violence between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs was headed toward "catastrophe," just as new Arab terror attacks took place in Judea and Samaria.
An Israeli woman was stabbed and moderately wounded in one such attack in Gush Etzion, while a terrorist attempted to stab an Israeli soldier before being shot dead in Hevron in another.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said the latest flare-up in violence in the decades-old conflict was "dangerous in the extreme."
"The violence between Palestinians and the Israelis will draw us ever closer to a catastrophe if not stopped immediately," he said during a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
World leaders are calling to revive moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that last collapsed in April 2014 - when the Palestinian Authority (PA) signed a unity deal with Hamas - to avoid a deeper slide into violence that many fear marks a third intifada terror war.
But PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas claimed Wednesday that "it is no longer useful to waste time in negotiations," and warned that a continuation of the current violence could "kill the last shred of hope for the two-state-solution-based peace" - even as his Fatah faction calls for more attacks.
Instead, he called on the United Nations "to set up a special regime for international protection for the Palestinian people," ignoring the fact that it is Palestinian Arab terrorists who have been behind the wave of terrorist attacks in Israel over the past month.
AFP contributed to this report.