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.
