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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 Palestinian youth is detained by an Israeli border police officer during scuffles that erupted after Palestinians held prayers just outside Jerusalem's Old City in protest over the installation of metal detectors placed at an entrance to the Old City's compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount July 17, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Awad - RTX3BRG6
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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.

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