
A U.S.-brokered summit had barely ended with pledges to calm violence and slow Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank when Palestinian homes were set ablaze by Jewish settlers in retaliation for a deadly Palestinian gun ambush.
Hopes for a calming effect of the meeting hosted by Jordan in the Red Sea port of Aqaba and attended by high-level Israeli and Palestinian security officials, faded further when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disavowed any notion of a halt to settlement-building.