At an unusual press conference to address the escalating violence across Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, flanked by the nation’s top security officials, promised that the government would be “taking action” against inciters and perpetrators of violence, including enhanced security measures and stiff punishments for those involved in rock and firebomb throwing.

Netanyahu told the nation that “we live in the Middle East and that the flames of radical Islam, which are burning the entire region, are also reaching us.”

But Israel is a very strong country and Israelis are a strong people. The measures that I have detailed, as well as others which I will not detail, are not an immediate, magical solution. But with persistence, thoroughness and determination, we will prove that terrorism does not pay – and we will defeat it.

Netanyahu criticized the wave of violence as “the result of wild and mendacious incitement by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, several countries in the region and – no less and frequently much more – the Islamic Movement in Israel, which is igniting the ground with lies regarding our policy on the Temple Mount and the purported changes that we want to make to the status quo. This is an absolute lie.”

Saying that “at this time we need to join forces, we need a broad national front,” Netanyahu’s statements suggested that he was seeking to form a national unity government with the Zionist Union, the main opposition party. Party leader Isaac Herzog dismissed the idea when queried by reporters, saying that the prime minister “runs from speech to speech but words don’t stop terrorism and don’t serve security.”

[Photo: IsraeliPM / YouTube ]