Amman, Jordan – The commitments of the recent US-brokered Aqaba Summit are no more than ink on paper in the face of the chaos that has erupted in the occupied West Bank and Israel over the past week. 

During a meeting between top Israeli and Palestinian security chiefs, two Israeli settlers were killed in Hawara, near the West Bank city of Nablus. And in retaliation, dozens of Palestinian homes were set ablaze, leaving hundreds injured and one dead – one of the most violent settler attacks to date. 

Also mere hours after the summit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his far-right coalition members, denied the summit’s promise to pause settlement construction in the occupied territories.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), in the presence of representatives from Jordan, Egypt, and the Biden administration, agreed during the meeting to revamp security cooperation in an effort to de-escalate tensions ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.

The PA’s ties with Israel had been frozen since January following a deadly military raid in Jenin, in the West Bank.

“They were trying to apply a tourniquet to stop the haemorrhage and stabilise things. But that didn’t go very well,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst based in Tel Aviv.

The past week has witnessed “a dual track of chaos”, she told The New Arab, referencing the also “extremely volatile” domestic situation in Israel. While tensions in the occupied West Bank were on fire, some of the largest anti-government protests in Israel’s history erupted, with hundreds of thousands demonstrating against the far-right government’s plans to radically reform the judiciary.

Although Jordan, Egypt, and the US praised the summit’s “major progress” towards improving Israel-Palestine relations – the first meeting of its kind in years – it was immediately blasted by both Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Hamas, as well as other groups, slammed the PA for joining participants who represent “Zionist interests”, while many of Israel’s far-right Knesset members rejected the outcomes of the summit altogether.

“Any attempt to quiet things down has actually had the reverse effect and has actually fuelled public anger to the point where radical elements are now having far more influence,” said Tahani Mustafa, the Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

“The purpose of the summit was deterrence,” Mustafa told TNA. “But it had absolutely no effect on the ground”.