The Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a national conflict that risks turning into a religious war, has added five Israelis and four Palestinians to its list of victims over the past two weeks. Israel, long perceived as an island of stability in a stormy sea, is looking increasingly like a sinking raft. Drunk with power, it is evolving from being a strategic asset in the global fight against Islamic zealotry and terrorism into a provider of top-grade material for sedition by global jihad. When its inebriation with power erupts at sites holy to both Judaism and Islam, it provides excellent incendiary material for the zealots.

Ben Caspit raised the chilling prospect that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliberately delayed removing the metal detectors from the Temple Mount on July 25 to feed the flames and divert public and media attention away from the growing tide of police investigations against him. However, not a single policeman went after Netanyahu in 1996, when he approved the opening of the Western Wall tunnels — a mistake that cost the lives of 17 Israelis and dozens of Palestinians. Caspit wondered whether Netanyahu was afraid that removing the metal detectors from the Temple Mount would be interpreted as a display of weakness and push right-wing voters into the arms of HaBayit HaYehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett. But Bennett’s party had not even been born in 2010 when Netanyahu flexed his muscles at Turkey and embroiled Israel in the imbroglio of the Mavi Marmara — a flotilla that sought to break the Israeli-imposed blockade of the Gaza Strip.

One cannot discount the possibility that the corruption probes and right-wing pressure affected Netanyahu’s judgment. However, the installation of the metal detectors (following the July 14 shooting death at the site of two Israeli policemen) was not a momentary lapse, the result of personal or political circumstances. Israel’s top defense and diplomacy professionals, such as the heads of the military, the Shin Bet and the foreign service, have failed time and again in their efforts to minimize the damage of the occupation and the stalemate with the Palestinians and to limit the influence of political and personal considerations on government decision-making. The Temple Mount crisis exposes a fundamental flaw in the system of checks and balances at the top echelons of power — an essential element in a violent conflict and loss of hope for its resolution.

Absent a full-time foreign minister (Netanyahu serves also in that capacity), there is no one at the Cabinet level with the expertise and prestige to present the regional and international implications of a move such as undermining the fragile status quo on the Temple Mount. The contribution of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman at such events focuses on incitement against Arab Knesset members. Liberman astonished the security establishment when declaring July 23 that Israel can manage without security coordination with the Palestinian Authority. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan is proving repeatedly to have a fondness for pyromania. He turned a series of wildfires (November 2016) into a wave of nationalistic terror acts (police did not corroborate this assumption); he declared that an Israeli Bedouin teacher shot to death by police was an activist of the Islamic State. He took the opportunity of a reception for US President Donald Trump in May to tell the guest about a supposed “terror attack” that had already been ruled by police to be a traffic accident.