Jerusalem, the holy city dedicated to the three Abrahamic and monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, threatens to ignite again.
Israeli settlers and their extremist allies stoked tensions throughout the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, with a campaign of incitement to hatred inside occupied Arab East Jerusalem. before further evictions Palestinian families. They have also caused trouble at religious sites such as the al-Aqsa mosque.
Israel is risking its security. These far-right provocations provided the perfect excuse for Hamas, the Islamist political-military group that controls the Gaza Strip, to fire hundreds of rockets at Israel, prompting dozens of airstrikes in response – with the risk of a resumption of the Gaza wars of 2009, 2012 and 2014.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque is located in a religious shrine in the heart of Jerusalem, known to Muslims as Haram ash-Sharif, or Noble Shrine, and to Jews as the Temple Mount. It is also home to the Dome of the Rock, from which in Islamic tradition the Prophet Muhammad made a journey to heaven, and the Western Wall, sacred to Jews as the surviving structure of the Second Temple and its Holy of Holies, started by Herod the Great. and destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.
Israel seized East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War, gradually annexing and colonizing its Arab neighborhoods. But successive governments have generally preserved the religious status quo in the 36-acre complex, treating it with the care due to a time bomb. The Hashemite royal family of Jordan, by tradition and by treaty, is the custodian of the Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem.
Mocking the rival traditions of deeply emotional holiness in the Holy City, which have clashed through the millennia, always risks unleashing a rocket-fueled political-religious identity shock. Yet this is what is happening. Israeli riot police stormed the al-Aqsa compound on Monday, attacking protesters throwing stones with rubber bullets and stun grenades, spraying tear gas and putrid “skunk water” . About 600 Palestinians, including worshipers inside the mosque, have been injured in clashes in Jerusalem since Friday.
In the weeks leading up to this eruption, passions boiled before an Israeli Supreme Court ruling on the expulsion of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, a middle class neighborhood in Arab East Jerusalem.
Most countries in the world do not recognize the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel. This is the latest push in a four-decade campaign by Israeli settlers to clear the areas in and around the Old City of Palestinian families who have lived there for generations. Besides evictions, they are driven out by a host of zoning and residency laws, building restrictions, and the bulldozing of Palestinian properties.
But now there is a political vacuum. Benjamin Netanyahu, the five-term prime minister on trial for corruption, was unable to form a government despite its embrace of the religious and the extreme right. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the increasingly irrelevant and corrupt Palestinian Authority, which has quasi-municipal powers over 40% of the occupied West Bank, has again postponed what would have been the first elections since 2006 – which Hamas has won. Extremists are rioting.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party and ally of Netanyahu, tweeted that “it’s time to liberate the Temple Mount and Jerusalem, and show them who owns the house once and for all.”
Ben-Gvir’s behavior is reminiscent of that of Ariel Sharon, the late Prime Minister and champion of the settlers, chaperoned in front of the Haram ash-Sharif towards the Temple Mount in September 2000 by hundreds of Israeli riot police. This lit up the powder trail of a second Palestinian uprising, known as the al-Aqsa intifada.
Riot police inside the holy shrine this week are crossing a dangerous line. A seemingly over land conflict acquires threatening religious overtones that encourage a collision of irreducible identities in a region that is no shortage of fanatics.
Former President Donald Trump encouraged the Israeli right in Jerusalem by moving the United States Embassy there. And Netanyahu, in an attempt to stay in power, courted openly racist anti-Arab groups determined to take control of Haram ash-Sharif.
The hustle and bustle of turmoil in the holy city weakens Israel’s credentials. As a strategy to expand the occupation and install more settlers, it rules out the possibility of a Palestinian state and forces Palestinians fight for equal rights inside a Greater Israel, undermining Israel’s legitimacy in world opinion.
It also jeopardizes Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors, as well as with Muslims around the world. There have been protests from turkey in Jordan, as well as in Arab cities in Israel. Relations with Jordan are at an all-time low. Jordan, along with Egypt, was part of the first wave of “normalization” with Israel, through their respective peace treaties of 1994 and 1979.
But the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, pioneers of the so-called Abraham Chords with Israel, are now loud in protest at events in the city of the Abrahamic denominations. In Jerusalem, Israel risks its second wave of detente with the Arabs.
