Hamas is trying, and may succeed, in dragging Israel into a conflict on multiple fronts, with the Temple Mount serving as the trigger and the bonfire with which they set everything on fire, exactly as was the case in April 2021. This time, the means is another fictitious version of a modern blood libel that "Al-Aqsa is under threat." For over a week now, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been telling the public online stories of how a ritual Passover sacrifice will be carried out on the Temple Mount.
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They're knowingly lying now, just as they did in the past. They know the Temple Mount's history over the last 55 years. They know that Israel has never allowed it. Moreover, on a number of channels, including Jordanian, Egyptian, and American, the Palestinians, including the radical Muslims among them, have received clarification that this year, too, no such ritual will be allowed to take place. But Hamas and their ilk have knowingly chosen to ignore this and set the Temple Mount on fire because a large bonfire that once again sucks in Arab Israelis and pours oil onto the terrorism fire lit here in recent weeks suits them at this point in time.
The police have thus far been gentle, initially proposing the Waqf officials try to disperse the rioters themselves. This was a mistake. Even if it wanted to – and it doesn't - the Waqf is incapable of confronting Hamas. Some senior Waqf officials were and perhaps remain connected to Hamas.
Preparations for the riots and clashes, the largest seen since the IDF's Operation Guardian of the Walls in the Gaza Strip, began Thursday night, and they were carried out in the open. The stockpiles of rocks, bottles, and explosives should have been confiscated the moment they began to pile up, and the rioters should have been pulled off the Temple Mount before and not one second after the riots began.
But it is difficult to conduct oneself correctly when the public security minister is Labor's Omer Bar-Lev, and the Muslim Brotherhood's Ra'am party, whose members have repeatedly identified with the worst of our enemies, is a partner to the coalition. Shamefully, it was hours after the rocks were thrown at the Western Wall that the decision was finally made to act with greater force.
As always, when it comes to the Temple Mount, Jordan has played a double game. Israel this time went out of its way to coordinate with the Hashemite Kingdom. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister and Prime Minister-designate Yair Lapid, and Defense Minister Benny Gantz spoke to King Abdullah II and his people before Ramadan even began. The Jordanians were asked to ensure there was no nocturnal barricading inside the mosque. They succeeded in doing this for a few nights, but they failed Thursday night.
The Jordanians know full well who is behind the disturbances on the Temple Mount. They know that Israel went above and beyond to avoid the events that are now taking place, but they "must" blame us when it comes to Al-Aqsa to avoid domestic unrest in the kingdom, which it and Israel consider to be the guardian of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem.
Israel did not invade Al-Aqsa as the liars from Ra'am, Hamas, the Joint Arab List, and the Palestinian Authority claim. It acted like a law-abiding country and took what appears to have been excessively minimal, sensitive, and considerate action against rioters who turned the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism into a weapon for the millionth time to try and fabricate a story and destroy what remains of the fragile coexistence between Jews and Arabs, the children of Abraham our forefather and the inhabitants of this land.
We must do everything in our power so that their nefarious plan fails and so that we avoid a repeat of the riots witnessed in mixed Jewish-Arab cities last year. We must also tell the Jewish, Israeli truth about the Temple Mount, a place where the central and existential changes to the status quo throughout the years have been made by the Muslim and not the Jewish side. A place where the serial lies of Al-Aqsa being under threat have made it a conveyer belt for terrorist attacks while gracing the name of Allah in vain and desecrating the sanctity of Islam and Judaism.
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