JERUSALEM — Hours after an Israeli woman who was stabbed by Palestinian assailants in a West Bank settlement died on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel rebuked the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who criticized Israel’s settlement activity and said it was “human nature to react to occupation.”
Addressing the Security Council in New York, Mr. Ban condemned the recent wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians, including the stabbings of two Israeli women on Monday in the settlement of Beit Horon. But he added, “Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of a half-century of occupation and the paralysis of the peace process.”
In an unusually personal retort, Mr. Netanyahu said, “The words of the U.N. secretary general give a tailwind to terrorism.”
Mr. Netanyahu added that “the Palestinian murderers do not want to build a state — they want to destroy a state and they say that out loud.”
“They want to kill Jews wherever they are, and they say that out loud,” he said.
The diplomatic confrontation came amid tensions with the European Union over its opposition to Israeli settlements and more than a week after Mr. Netanyahu clashed with the United States ambassador to Israel, Daniel B. Shapiro, who also criticized Israel’s settlement policy, saying it raised “honest questions about Israel’s long-term intentions.”
“If, as it appears, we are in an extended period when there cannot be direct negotiations,” Mr. Shapiro said, “we must find ways of preserving the viability of a two-state solution for the future — Israel’s only path to avoid becoming a binational state.”
Mr. Netanyahu rejected Mr. Shapiro’s remarks, calling them “unacceptable and incorrect,” and criticized their timing, coming on a day when Israel buried a mother of six who was stabbed to death in the doorway of her home in the settlement of Otniel, and a pregnant woman was stabbed in the settlement of Tekoa.
Mr. Shapiro acknowledged in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio this week that “the timing was not the best.”
The victim of the latest knife attack, Shlomit Krigman, 23, was one of two women who were stabbed on Monday during an assault in the settlement of Beit Horon. Ms. Krigman died in a Jerusalem hospital early Tuesday, several hours after the attack.
A security guard shot and killed the two Palestinian assailants who stabbed Ms. Krigman and Adina Cohen, 58.
That attack was the third knife attack against women in a West Bank settlement since Jan. 17, pointing to a new trend in a nearly four-month wave of violence.
Ms. Cohen said she fought off the assailants with her shopping bags when a car stopped and the occupants told her to get in.
Three pipe bombs were found in the area of the attack, according to the Israeli authorities, but all failed to explode.
About 26 Israelis, an American student and one Palestinian bystander have been killed in stabbings, car rammings and gun attacks since Oct. 1.
In the same period, about 150 Palestinians have been killed. Up to two-thirds of them have been described by Israel as assailants, while the others died during protests and clashes with the Israeli security forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and along Israel’s border with Gaza.
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