Palestinian use of the Temple Mount for incitement is nothing new. Illustrative banner of terrorists and Dome of the Rock. By Joshua Spurlock
After two Israeli police officers and three terrorist Arabs died in last Friday’s shooting attack in the Temple Mount area, Israel installed metal detectors to prevent future terror attacks. While that might seem like something everyone would want, the Palestinians were not only opposed to the security measures, some took to public protesting in Jerusalem in response. Eylon Levy, a news anchor for i24News in Israel, tweeted about his experience getting trapped in the Old City by a riot after covering a Palestinian prayer session meant to protest the metal detectors.
While the exact reason for the outburst was unclear to Levy, he tweeted that a prayer leader “lurched” at an Israeli policeman filming the prayers and “then all went crazy.” Levy’s tweets noted that the riots included religious Islamic chants, as well as cries of “with spirit and blood we’ll redeem Al Aqsa,” referring to the mosque near the Dome of the Rock atop the Temple Mount.
And it wasn’t just religious rioters who opposed the cameras. Even the Palestinian government got into the act.
The Ma’an News Agency reported that officials from the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah party that rules the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) convened on Sunday and opposed the metal detectors. The meeting on the situation was held at the office of Mahmoud al-Aloul, the deputy chairman of Fatah, and also included the Palestinian Authority Governor of Jerusalem and senior members of the Palestinian security forces.
The security measures had been determined on Saturday night following the terror attack the day before. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a consultation on the Temple Mount situation according to a press release from Netanyahu’s office. During the call, the Israelis made the decision to install the metal detectors along with cameras outside the Temple Mount that could still “cover events on the Mount”, noted the press release.
Netanyahu, per a previous statement from his office, “made it clear” to Palestinian Authority and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas that “Israel would take all necessary actions to maintain security on the Temple Mount, without changing the status quo.”
It should be noted that a secondary entrance to the Temple Mount and the entrances to the Western Wall plaza below the Temple Mount were already equipped with metal detectors, making the security updates to the Mount only new in scope and location, not in type.
Despite the opposition to the metal detectors, hundreds of Islamic worshippers entered the Temple Mount through them on Sunday, according to the Twitter page of Israeli Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
In addition, Israel even received some support from everyday people in Muslim nations over last week’s terror attack. Israeli Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Ofir Gendelman tweeted that it was “great to receive condemnations of the terror attack that was perpetrated near the Temple Mount from ordinary people from Jordan,Egypt &Yemen.” This was in addition to a tweet from Gendelman showing the official condemnations of the terror attack from the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan.
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, July 16, 2017)