In the area around Gush Etzion, a series of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Shaul David Judelman on Tuesday joined Palestinian friends to write a letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, pleading for help. They asked Abbas to order clerics from Al-Aqsa, a Jerusalem mosque that’s the third-holiest in Islam, to go to schools and “teach for calming the city.” Jerusalem, the interfaith group wrote, was feeling different these days, with religious tension escalating.
“There is definitely a different tone echoing through the last two months,” Judelman, an American who has lived in the Bat Ayin settlement for more than 13 years, said in an interview, citing armed attackers a who stormed a synagogue on Tuesday, killing four rabbis and a police officer.
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