Netanyahu's rash decision on Temple Mount sparks speculation
Is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu letting the Temple Mount crisis simmer to deflect attention from the scandals swirling around him?
A Jordanian citizen used a screwdriver to attack a security guard July 23 at the Israeli Embassy in Amman. The guard shot and killed him. Another Jordanian was killed as well, hit by a stray bullet. Two days earlier, Omar al-Abed, a Palestinian from Kubar, penetrated the adjacent Israeli settlement of Halamish, entered a home, and stabbed and killed a grandfather and his adult son and daughter. Five children hid in a second-floor room until a neighbor arrived and shot the intruder. That same day, four Palestinians were killed in rioting over the Temple Mount, known as Haram al-Sharif to Muslims. East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank had reached a boiling point. For the first time in a long time, hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets to demonstrate and vent their rage at the symbols of Israeli rule.
All of this stems from the metal detectors installed at the entrance to the Haram al-Sharif compound after the July 14 terrorist attack there. After two years of hard work, Israel had suppressed a wave of knife and other individual attacks that began in September 2015. The ensuing quiet was erased in a week.
The current round of violence lacks two major restraining factors that usually tend to lower the flames. The first is a responsible and energetic US administration familiar with the situation and reacting to such circumstances from almost the first moment by mediating between the parties. The second is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One question asked with increasing frequency is whether Netanyahu is intentionally delaying the removal of the metal detectors in an effort to sustain tensions and divert Israeli public and media attention from the wave of police investigations into his affairs. On July 20, Miki Ganor, who served as the intermediary between Israel and the German's Thyssenkrupp for a sale of submarines, signed a deal and turned into a state witness in one of the investigations. A vociferous public outcry is expected during the impending parade of defendants and others incriminated by his testimony. There is not yet any indication that Netanyahu will be implicated, but his most intimate confidants, including attorney David Shimron, are in up to their necks.
