Temple Mount Incitement Spurs Continued Palestinian Riots

Palestinian violence is intensifying, incited by Palestinian and Muslim leadership. 

On Friday, violent Palestinian rioting erupted, spurred by inciting rhetoric from the Palestinian Authority (PA) following Israel’s installation of metal detectors at the entrances to Temple Mount.

Three Palestinians were reported killed in the rioting.

The upgraded Israeli security measures were not introduced in a vacuum, but were a direct response to the deadly terrorist attack carried out by three Arabs just outside the compound on July 14 in which two Israeli officers were killed, using guns smuggled into the Al-Aqsa mosque.

While searching the area after the lethal shooting, authorities reportedly found a stockpile of weapons, including knives, slingshots, cudgels, spikes, inciting material, unexploded munitions, stun grenades, and binoculars.

The decision to install metal detectors was met with opposition by the Palestinians and parts of the Muslim world, who have accused Israel of upsetting the status quo. Meanwhile, at all four entrances to the Western Wall Plaza, visitors are required to walk through metal detectors and place bags in x-ray machines to ensure that they are not carrying weapons, a policy that has never been protested by Jews, Christians, Muslims, or members of any other faith visiting the site.

The Temple Mount has long been used as a place for and subject of incitement against Jews by Palestinian officials and Muslim hate preachers.

PA head Mahmoud Abbas promised not to allow Jews’ “filthy feet” on the Temple Mount. A teacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque school described Jews who visit the area as “monkeys and pigs.” And numerous hate preachers have called “to annihilate the Jews” and implored their followers to “slaughter Jews.”

Metal Detectors Are ‘Pure Security’

Backing Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount following a deadly terror attack there, Knesset member Yaakov Perry (Yesh Atid), a former head of the Israel Security Agency, said Thursday that the decision was based on “pure security.”

Perry described the Palestinians’ accusation that Israel is attempting to change the status quo as “an outrage….It’s in the interest of everybody – Islam, Judaism, governments, people, Jews and Palestinians – to try to protect these holy places better than they were protected before the act of terror.”

He observed that the Saudi government installed metal and explosives detectors at the Holy Mosque in Mecca in 2011.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, when weapons “were smuggled or stolen or hidden on the Temple Mount, it’s a must to tighten the security belts and I hope that even the Palestinians…will understand this as well.”

By: The Tower and United with Israel Staff