Checkpoints, metal detectors added in Old City

TERRORISM RESPONSE

JERUSALEM — Israel began implementing new security measures, including checkpoints and metal detectors, in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday, two days after three gunmen killed two police officers at the entrance to one of Islam’s holiest sites.

The three perpetrators, Palestinian Muslims with Israeli citizenship, were caught on Israeli police cameras exiting the sacred Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a site that is also revered by Jews, and shooting the two officers before darting back inside the esplanade. The assailants, all from the ArabIsraeli town of Umm al-Fahm, were shot dead at the site by security forces.

Immediately after the incident on Friday morning, Israelis closed the mosque and prevented worshippers from entering the compound and Old City for the first time since 1969.

The move was condemned by many in the Muslim world, who view the ramped-up security as an attempt by Israel to change the status quo at the site, which is often a flash point of violence between the sides.

Israeli police said the measures were necessary to secure the site — known to Israelis as the Temple Mount — and ensure that no other weapons remained.

Several members of the Wakf, the Islamic trust that administers the site, were detained by police on suspicion that they had aided the three attackers or incited violence against Israel, local media reported.

In an interview on Israel Army Radio on Sunday, Maj. Gen. Yoram Halevy, the Jerusalem District police commander, said dozens of knives, slingshots, batons, spikes and unexploded ordnance were found during the police sweep.

In the aftermath of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held a rare phone call, with Netanyahu imploring that there would be no change to the current arrangements at the complex, and Abbas, in a rare move, condemning the violence and calling on Netanyahu to reopen the site.

After holding a security briefing Saturday night, Netanyahu agreed to do so, ordering the mosque to reopen on Sunday. However, by early afternoon, only Muslim residents of the city were being allowed to enter, and all worshippers had to pass through newly installed metal detectors.