Riots to Order

The Palestinian Authority has provoked a new Temple Mount crisis, bringing riots and deadly attacks on Israelis. The pretext: Israel placed metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount, a holy site for Jews and Muslims alike. But Jerusalem has been responsible for security there for decades, and the new protection was a direct response to the recent killing of two Israeli police officers by three Israeli Arabs using weapons smuggled onto the sacred ground.

PA officials chose to paint it as a Jewish plot to seize more control of the Temple Mount, which Jordan has administered for decades.

“If Israel persists with these electric metal detectors, we will ask the Palestinian youth to step up their protests against them,” said Hatem Abdel Qader, head of Jerusalem affairs for the PA’s ruling Fatah party. “We will come en masse to put pressure on these detectors and we will pray outside the mosque and in the streets to prove that Israel isn’t respecting freedom of worship and faith.”

Funny: Saudi Arabia has 5,000 CCTV cameras watching over Mecca, with no impact on freedom of worship. And Jordan this year briefly proposed putting its own cameras on site.

Yet Palestinian leaders still got their desired “Day of Rage” outside the site on Friday, with protesters throwing rocks, fireworks and firebombs at security forces. Three rioters were killed in the clashes. That night, a Palestinian broke into a home in the West Bank settlement of Halamish and fatally stabbed three civilians.

More protests exploded across the Muslim world. And an assault in the Israeli Embassy compound in Amman, Jordan, on a security guard proved fatal for one of his attackers but deepened the crisis.

Early Tuesday, Israel agreed to remove the metal detectors and use less-intrusive security measures. Sadly, that will keep the peace only until Palestinian leaders decide they need to order up more riots and invent some new “wrongdoing” to place at Israel’s feet.