The Israeli right no longer bothers to conceal its abhorrence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would provide the Palestinians with an independent state alongside Israel. It also rejects a one man, one vote solution, the fundamental principle of democratic rule, for one binational state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Instead, the right boasts of its ability to manage the conflict with reasonable or negligible cost to Israel’s diplomacy, security or economy. It argues that Israel can manage quite well without resolving the conflict and by accelerating development of its settlements on occupied Palestinian territory. The crisis that unfolded after the July 14 terror attack on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif that left two Israeli police officers dead has so far cost the lives of five Israelis and four Palestinians (excluding the attackers). It proves that even in managing the conflict, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has been conducting itself like a bull in a china shop.

The failed management of the recent crisis peeled off the Band-Aid that the right has been working so hard to keep on the bloody conflict, exposing the wounds of the occupation to the glare of the international community and forcing it to get involved. Thus, the right-wing government provided non-Jewish politicians a foothold in Jerusalem — “Israel’s eternal and united capital,” in Netanyahu's words. This is the same Jerusalem that leads Netanyahu to fire off the hackneyed response that there is no difference between building in Jerusalem and building in Tel Aviv whenever a foreign leader dares criticize construction for Jews in the city's eastern, predominantly Palestinian areas. One can easily imagine Netanyahu’s incensed reaction had the “leftists” dared to discuss with foreign officials the removal of the contentious metal detectors that generated Muslim fury when Israel installed them at the entrance to the Temple Mount compound after the July 14 attack.

The regimes in Egypt and Jordan, with which Netanyahu describes relations as idyllic, could not ignore what the Arab public perceives as disrespect toward Islam. Placing metal detectors at the gates to the Haram al-Sharif compound is tantamount to an invitation to religious zealots in the Middle East to pounce on Arab leaders suspected of being overly intimate with Israel.

It only took Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a few hours to plunge into these brackish waters. Europe, dealing with Islamist terrorism, cannot stand idly by either, watching the conflagration and letting Israel do whatever it wants in Jerusalem. Even US President Donald Trump, who promised to push forward an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, was forced to join in the effort to find a face-saving compromise for both sides. Naturally, any compromise would entail a balanced arrangement, reflecting the international consensus that Israel is not sovereign over East Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount.