RUTHFULLY YOURS

Even if a serious discussion about Israel’s relations with the increasingly ‘Palestinized’ Jordan could take place without causing a major international crisis, Israel might conclude that it shouldn’t lean too heavily on the shaky Hashemite kingdom.

For 24 hours earlier this week, Jordan was holding the Israeli Embassy and its staff hostage. There is no other way of describing the situation. All the thanks and smiles can’t hide the reality. The message from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conversation with respected Ambassador to Jordan Einat Schlein and the security guard who shot two Jordanians after he was attacked, known in the Israeli press only by his first name, Ziv, when they returned to Israel via the Allenby Crossing was clear: We can breathe easy.

It’s lucky that during the fog of tensions that knocked many people off kilter, Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah were allies. Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, led them though a diplomatic minefield.

Abdullah made a mistake at the beginning. When there was still a media blackout in Israel about the embassy shooting, the king should have allowed Israel to extract the guard from Jordanian territory and bring him home. Once again, it was clear that any conflict with a Muslim official comes close to blowing up. The Muslims don’t like to see Jews using force and killing those who attack them. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Sheikh Raed Salah of the outlaw Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the Jordanians don’t like to witness scenarios like that — a Jew defending himself though force. But Abdullah’s mistake stemmed from the fact that he first had to pacify his own intelligence and security services, so that his guard dogs wouldn’t turn on him “in error.” And there are also the Bedouin tribes of Jordan, who pose a much greater danger to the Hashemite kingdom than the Palestinians who make up the vast majority of its population.

Only a few weeks ago, a Jordanian army officer was sentenced to death for murdering three members of the U.S. “special forces” (the CIA, apparently). The incident took place in November 2016 on a U.S. air force base in Jordan and apparently provided the background for this week’s incident involving the embassy guard shooting the furniture delivery guy.

Some of the Bedouin tribes have been in a state of semi-rebellion against King Abdullah for quite a while. The man who murdered the three Americans belonged to one of them. They demanded his release. The Islamic State brainwashing is taking root over there, as it has among certain sectors of the Israeli Arab public. Kushner and Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt were doubtlessly well-briefed by the CIA on the affair before they helped Netanyahu and Abdullah out of the minefield that stretched between Amman and the Temple Mount. The incident needed to come to a quick end before it snowballed into a Benghazi-like mess.

King Abdullah has been “Abbas-ized.” He spends a lot of time outside his kingdom. He no longer has any strong men in the Jordanian government though whom he can govern. His government is becoming more and more western and Palestinian, made up of individuals who know how to curry favor with Washington and Brussels, but not the Bedouin at home.

Crucially, and contrary to Palestinian claims, there has been no Israeli decision to ban Muslims from entering the Temple Mount. For the first time since 1967, the Palestinians are denying Muslim worshippers free access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Palestinians and the Islamic religious authorities are protesting against security measures that are intended to save the lives of Muslim worshippers and prevent the desecration of their holy sites by terrorists and rioters. They are protesting because Israel is trying to make it hard for them to murder Jews.

To clarify what is actually going on: it is not the security measures that really anger the Palestinians; for them, this crisis is not about a metal detector or a security camera. It is not the security measures that the Palestinians want dismantled. It is Israel that they want dismantled.

The metal detectors that were supposed to prevent Muslims from smuggling weapons into the Temple Mount compound, and which were removed by the Israeli authorities this week, have a more accurate name: “lie detectors.” They have exposed Palestinian lies and the real reason behind Palestinian anger.

Israel apparently removed the metal detectors from the gates of the Temple Mount as part of a deal to end an unexpected crisis with Jordan over the killing of two Jordanian men by an Israeli embassy security officer in Amman. The security officer says he was acting in self-defense after being attacked by one of the Jordanians with a screwdriver.

The crisis erupted when the Jordanian authorities insisted on interrogating the officer — a request that was rejected by Israel because the officer enjoys diplomatic immunity. US intervention and a phone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah helped end the crisis peacefully and quickly, and the officer and the rest of the Israeli embassy staff were permitted to leave Jordan and head back to Israel.

Shortly after the embassy staff returned to Israel, the Israeli authorities started removing the metal detectors that were installed at the entrances to the Temple Mount after terrorists murdered two Israeli police officers on July 14. The move sparked a wave of rumors and speculation, according to which the Jordanians allowed the embassy staff to return home in exchange for the removal of the metal detectors.

Israel and Jordan have denied any link between the shooting incident in Amman and the removal of the metal detectors.

The crisis that erupted between Israel and Jordan over the killing of the two Jordanians was solved in less than 48 hours — much to the dismay of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians were hoping to exploit the crisis to exacerbate tensions between Amman and Jerusalem. Their ultimate goal: to cause the Jordanians to scrap their peace treaty with Israel and return to the state of war with the “Zionist enemy.” The Palestinians were also hoping to exploit the crisis to incite Jordanians against Israel and the Hashemite monarchy.

Fortunately, the Jordanian authorities did not fall into the Palestinian trap. They realized that it is in their own interest to resolve the crisis swiftly and peacefully. King Abdullah was wise enough not to allow the Palestinians to drag him into a confrontation with Israel.

Since the installation of the metal detectors at the Temple Mount, the Palestinians have been waging yet another campaign of fabrications and distortions against Israel. This Palestinian blood libel claims that Israel is seeking to “change the status quo” at the Temple Mount by introducing new security measures such as metal detectors and surveillance cameras at the gates to the holy site.

The classic example of chutzpah is to kill one’s parents and then demand clemency in the court on the grounds of being an orphan.

People laugh hearing this example despite its gruesomeness, for no one in his right mind can take it seriously. Yet it is no laughing matter anymore, for recently, Palestinians utilized that very excuse in the court of public opinion.

There is a hill in Jerusalem called by Palestinians the Al-Aqsa compound, by Jews the Temple Mount. After Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War a half-century ago, Israelis and Arabs came up with a simple equilibrium that became the status quo regarding the site: all can visit, but only Muslims can pray there.

Simply put, the status quo is this: the Al-Aqsa compound is a site of Muslim prayer.

On July 14, 2017, three terrorists ran out of it, gunning down two Israeli policemen, and ran back, hoping to escape there. They were shot and killed by the police.

This means that the status quo got changed – by the Palestinians. From the place of prayer, Al-Aqsa was turned into a weapons storage facility and a launchpad for terrorist attacks.

By placing around it metal detectors and surveillance cameras – thus rendering Al-Aqsa unusable for military purposes – Israeli authorities turned the location back into a prayer site.

And yet the Palestinians are unhappy. Instead of being grateful for restoring the status quo, they are accusing Israelis of altering the very status quo they, the Palestinians, themselves murderously altered in the first place, which Israelis restored! Not willing to come back to Al-Aqsa, they cry to heaven, irate at Jewish perfidy!

I don’t think heaven hears them. They are refusing to come pray at Al-Aqsa for several days now, yet somehow the heavens are not falling down.

Perhaps even Allah does not find funny Palestinians’ bizarre claims of victimhood after committing a murder.

The demonstration was sparked by new security measures on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which have now been removed.

Protesters also waved Palestinian and Turkish flags, a well as pictures of the al-Aksa mosque. Cries of “Allahu-akbar” can be heard in amateur footage of the protest.

Israeli flags were snatched from members of a small counter protest, with one being burnt. Police intervened as a second flag was trampled on.
Yiftah Curiel, a diplomat and spokesman for the embassy, slammed “thugs” flying terror flags and said demonstrators were “cheering on the bloodshed” after three Israelis were murdered in their homes in the West Bank on Friday.

The Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) invited people to attend the so-called “Emergency Protest against Israeli aggressions in Jerusalem” in London on Facebook.
“Israeli government has closed al-Aksa Mosque, imposed tight security check on worshipers as part of its plans to seize the holy Muslim site”, they claimed on the event page.

The militant wing of Hezbollah is a banned terrorist organisation in the UK. However, the political wing is still legal, meaning police are powerless to remove Hezbollah flags if those flying them claim only to support part of the group.

Hundreds of flags of the terror group were on display at the anti-Israel al-Quds Day rally on London’s street in June.

Members of the Jewish community and Tory and UKIP members of the London Assembly slammed the Mayor, Sadiq Khan, for initially refusing to condemn the flags and push for them to be banned.

The Mayor later changed his position and now supports a ban.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party announced Saturday that the “campaign for Jerusalem has effectively begun, and will not stop until a Palestinian victory and the release of the holy sites from Israeli occupation.” Fatah demanded the removal of metal detectors and other security devices from the entrance to the Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. A week earlier two Israeli policemen were killed by terrorists who had stashed their weapons inside the mosque.

The Fatah statement was illogical and hypocritical. Many mosques in Muslim-majority countries use the same security technology to protect worshipers, tourists and police. Yet Mr. Abbas managed to force the Israeli government to remove them. He did it by deflecting attention from the policemen’s murders and stoking fear of a religious conflagration with vast repercussions.

The Temple Mount crisis highlights with exceptional clarity three factors that explain why a steady 80% of Palestinians believe they can eliminate the Jewish state: Islamic doctrine, international succor and Israeli timidity.

Islam carries with it the expectation that any land once under Muslim control is an endowment that must inevitably revert to Muslim rule. The idea has abiding power: think of Osama bin Laden’s dream of resurrecting Andalusia and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hopes of regaining influence over the Balkans. Palestinians consistently report their belief that the state of Israel will collapse within a few decades.

A confrontation over the Temple Mount uniquely excites this expectation because it reaches far beyond the local population to arouse the passions of many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. The most prominent Muslim leaders and institutions overwhelmingly supported Fatah’s position on the Temple Mount security provisions. Islamic voices outside the pro-Palestinian consensus are rare. Palestinians rejoice in their role as the tip of an enormous spear.

Palestinians’ illusions of might enjoy considerable international support. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization routinely passes critical resolutions aimed at Israel. Columbia University houses something called the Center for Palestine Studies. Major corporations such as Google and news organizations like the British Broadcasting Corp. pretend there’s a country called Palestine. Foreign aid has created a Palestinian pseudo-economy that in 2016 enjoyed a phenomenal 4.1% growth rate. CONTINUE AT SITE

On July 14, for the first time in decades, Israel closed the Temple Mount, a site holy to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, on a Friday—Islam’s holy day. The move was made after three Arab Israelis opened fire at the site, killing two Israeli policemen. The Muslim terrorists, Israeli citizens who had used automatic weapons that they apparently carried in a knapsack to the Temple Mount and hid at the holy site prior to the attack, were tracked down and killed by Israeli police. By Sunday, July 16, the Temple Mount had reopened, with temporary metal detectors and cameras in place to screen worshipers.

While Israelis initially considered the installation of magnometers and cameras a non-controversial step aimed at boosting security for all who pray at the site, others—Palestinian, Jordanian, and Muslim— condemned what they called Israel’s effort to change the site’s political status and consolidate control. The ensuing protests have left six dead in Israel— three Palestinian protesters and three Israeli settlers who were stabbed to death in their homes. On Monday evening, Israelis and Arab officials edged closer to a deal to resolve the crisis.

The recent spate of violence is a grim reminder of age-old tensions—and yet, in Israel, an increasingly rare one. In a region beset by war and political turmoil, Israel—and its capital—have remained relatively calm. That’s thanks in part to radical changes in counterterrorism policing led by Major General Yoram Halevy, 54, commander of the Israeli Police’s Jerusalem district. One of the force’s most experienced officers, Halevy has for the past 17 months overseen the police’s counterterrorism mission in Jerusalem, including the roughly 5,000 members of the Israeli Police and Border Police operating in the city.

In an interview only days before the Temple Mount attack, he discussed some of his reforms publicly for the first time and explained why he thinks they are reducing both violence and civilian tolerance of it.

The numbers are impressive. In 2015, there were 33 stabbings in the city; this year, until the latest violence, there have been just six. In 2015, Jerusalem reported six deaths due to deliberate car-rammings; this year, one person has died in such incidents. While 43 terrorist attacks occurred in the city in 2015, only eight so far have taken place in 2017. Within the past year, stone-throwing incidents have dropped by 15 percent. Despite the Temple Mount attack, “these are dramatic reductions,” Halevy said.

Such a record under the most challenging of circumstances holds potentially valuable lessons for other cities targeted by terror. “Anyone can chase down and arrest terrorists. That’s the easy part,” said Halevy, the Jerusalem-born son of Iraqi Jews who speaks fluent Arabic and worked undercover for the police in the Palestinian community for several years. “Denying terrorists the civilian support they crave and need to operate is a far tougher challenge.”

The most effective way of defusing Palestinian hatred of the Israelis who, in their view, occupy their capital and country is to “empower the silent civilian majority which is sick and tired of the violence, but afraid to say so.” This, Halevy told me through a translator, though he speaks some English, is his overarching goal.

Few cities are as tempting a terrorist target as Jerusalem. Fought over for centuries, destroyed at least twice, besieged some 23 times, and recaptured 44 times, Jerusalem is the heart of the modern struggle between two peoples who claim the same land. The city remains demographically divided between Israelis concentrated in the west and Palestinians in the east. But it has not been physically split since the 1967 war, when Israel wrested control of East Jerusalem from Jordan, which still helps administer sensitive holy sites like the Temple Mount. As such, Jerusalem has been the scene of persistent protests, strikes, and terrorist attacks—even as 10 million tourists visit each year.

So, who is taking Abbas’s threats to suspend security cooperation with Israel seriously? Not Israel, not the Americans, and certainly not many Palestinians. Abbas is caught between two bad places — both of his very own making. On the one hand, he knows that security cooperation with Israel is his only insurance policy to remain in power and alive. On the other hand, Abbas is acutely aware of his status among many Palestinians, who would be more than happy to replace him with someone more… to their taste.

Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj’s message was directed to the Israeli public with the goal of pressuring the Israeli government and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cave in to Palestinian threats and remove the metal detectors. This is why Faraj chose an Israeli journalist who is known to be sympathetic to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership. Faraj and his boss — Abbas — wanted to scare the Israeli public and turn them against Netanyahu by telling them that Palestinians will stop security coordination with Israel unless the metal detectors were removed.

Abbas is still playing his old game. Out of one side of his mouth he claimed a desire for a peaceful solution to the metal detectors crisis, and out of the other side, he egged his people on to murder more and more Israelis. As it turns out, whether security coordination is “sacred” or “suspended,” Abbas is in it for one person only: himself.

The conflicting reports emerging from Ramallah concerning security coordination with Israel serve as yet another reminder of the Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders’ astounding hypocrisy.

Israel, for its part, has brushed aside reports about a suspension of the security coordination with the Palestinian Authority as yet another Abbas gimmick.

It is far from lost on Mahmoud Abbas and his PA that such security coordination is what stands between a very hungry Hamas and Abbas served up on toast for breakfast.

In the past, Abbas has rightly and reasonably described security coordination with Israel as “sacred,” saying he will never succumb to pressure from Hamas and many Palestinians to stop working with Israel in the West Bank.

“I wish to say this openly – security coordination (with Israel) is sacred and will continue regardless of our political differences,” Abbas declared in 2014.

Abbas’s statement came amid reports that Israeli intelligence had thwarted a Hamas assassination plot against him in 2014.

Security coordination is indeed sacred for the Palestinian Authority president — not to mention his family members and senior officials, who without such cooperation would also be dead, imprisoned or forced into exile. Abbas has yet to recover from the nightmare of 2007, when Hamas brought about the collapse of his Palestinian Authority and violently seized control over the Gaza Strip. The last thing Abbas wants is a recurrence of that horrific scenario; thousands of his police officers and Fatah loyalists were severely humiliated, and many either lynched in public, thrown off the high floors of buildings, imprisoned, or forced either to surrender or flee to Israel and Egypt.

The latest fiasco pertaining to the issue of security coordination with Israel began on July 21, when Abbas announced his decision to “freeze contacts with the occupation state (Israel) on all levels.” Abbas’s announcement came during a meeting of Palestinian leaders in Ramallah to discuss the crisis surrounding Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This decision came in response to a shooting attack on July 14 carried out by three Arab Israelis that resulted in the murder of two Israeli police officers.