Ruthie Blum: The Temple Mount travesty and poor US policy
FOREIGN MINISTER Yair Lapid adopted an equally powerless stance. After speaking on the phone with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he recounted having “emphasized Israel’s responsible and measured efforts in the face of riots by hundreds of Islamic extremists on the Temple Mount,” and insisted that Israel “would not tolerate calls for violence.”Is Israel Facing a New Intifada?
Oh dear. Al-Khasawneh and Abdullah must have been shaking in their boots – double-time when they heard that Lapid had impressed upon Blinken the “need for international support to restore calm to Jerusalem.”
International support? Where from, exactly? The Israel-bashing Security Council?
Perhaps he was angling for a helping hand from Blinken himself, who last month “discussed [with Bennett] ways to foster a peaceful Passover, Ramadan and Easter across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, particularly in Jerusalem... [such as] working to prevent actions on all sides that could raise tensions, including settlement expansion, settler violence, incitement to violence, demolitions, payments to individuals convicted of terrorism [and] evictions of families from homes they’ve lived in for decades.”
All one needs to grasp just how wrong the thinking and behavior of Bennett, Lapid and their American counterparts has been is a review of the period leading up to and responsible for the Abraham Accords. On April 30, 2018, then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed the nation a trove of tens of thousands of documents obtained by the Mossad from a warehouse in Tehran.
It was on the basis of this massive archive, which provided proof of Iran’s clandestine nuclear-weapons program, that Trump announced on May 8, a mere eight days later, that he was withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 nuclear deal between the P5+1 countries and the Islamic Republic.
Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Shaul Mofaz was Chief of Staff when the IDF entered the West Bank in Operation Defensive Shield on March 29, 2002, to quell the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign that had murdered 135 people in Israel that month during the Second Intifada. Mofaz said the reality now is not at all similar. "Then the terror was directed by Arafat, and most of the Palestinians - 70% to 80% - joined in the confrontation and supported it." Today, the terrorism is not being directed by the PA leadership, nor does it have the same level of popular participation and support.A Timeline of Terror and Tensions, Spring 2022
"Imagine 45,000 soldiers, half of them reservists, going into all the refugee camps, 15 in all, all eight of the cities, all of the tunnels, going into the casbahs and going house to house to take out weapons." That operation fundamentally changed the country's security reality. "That the IDF today operates freely in the area is thanks to Defensive Shield." The Second Intifada, Mofaz said, also changed public opinion in Israel, with a large part of Israelis no longer believing that it was possible to trust Arafat or the PA.
Mofaz said he did not see the support of 70-80% of the Palestinian population for an armed confrontation with Israel today. "Something happened to Palestinian society as well. Palestinian society, and a good part of our enemies, understand that they won't get achievements through violence and terror. Many of the Palestinian leaders during that period will tell you today that it was a mistake to strike out against Israel with suicide bombers and guns to kill Israelis to achieve diplomatic aims...because while Israelis were obviously hurt, those who paid a higher price were the Palestinians."
In the spring of 2022, Israel was struck by a series of Arab terror attacks. The attacks, in the cities of Beersheva, Hadera, Bnei Brak, and Tel Aviv, took 14 innocent Jewish, Arab, and Christian lives. During counter-terror operations and arrest raids in the weeks that followed, over two dozen Palestinians were killed, nearly all of them in the act of attacking Israelis.
Stone throwing attacks by Palestinian rioters on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount led to violent clashes between the rioters and Israeli police officers. Ramadan prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque, though, were attended by many thousands of peaceful Muslim worshipers and passed without incident.
In recent days, Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip escalated tensions, and threatened to incite broader fighting between Israel and the Hamas terror organization that rules the Gaza Strip.
The following timeline covers major incidents during the terror wave and subsequent tensions. As some coverage of and commentary on the tensions blur and equivocate, concealing the distinctions between civilians and assailants, lumping them together as a “cycle of violence,” or suggesting the violence is the inevitable result of the confluence of Passover, Ramadan, and Easter, the timeline helps clarify what happened, and why.