Muslims keep up shrine boycott
Israel promises to replace metal detectors with ‘advanced technology’ security
Muslim leaders urged the faithful to keep up their prayer protests and avoid entering a contested Jerusalem shrine, even after Israel dismantled metal detectors that initially triggered the tensions.
Israel said it would replace the metal detectors with new security arrangements based on “advanced technology,” reportedly including sophisticated cameras, but said it could take up to six months to install them.
Muslim clerics have demanded that Israel restore the situation at the shrine — the third holiest in Islam and the holiest in Judaism — to what it was before it installed the metal detectors last week.
The clerics said that they need time to study the proposed new Israeli measures. “We need to know all the details before we decide to pray inside the compound,” said the mufti, or top Muslim cleric in Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein.
Muslim worshippers heeded the call of the clergy, with dozens performing noon prayers in the streets outside the shrine on Tuesday.
The continued protests meant that the escalating crisis between Israel and the Muslim world, which began in mid-July, has not been defused, even after Israel backed down on the metal detectors.
Jordan, the Muslim custodian of the shrine, has played a key role in trying to end the showdown
over the holy site.
Over the weekend, Jordan’s efforts were complicated by a shooting at Israel’s Embassy in Amman in which an Israeli guard killed two Jordanians after being attacked by one with a screwdriver.
A 24-hour standoff was resolve after a phone call between Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jordan initially said the guard could not leave without an investigation, but then allowed him and the rest of the embassy staff
to leave to Israel late Monday.
The timing of the events — the evacuation of the diplomats, followed by the removal of the metal detectors — suggested a larger deal had been struck between the two countries.
The 37-acre (15-hectare) holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City sits on the fault line of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has triggered major confrontations in the past.
Israel had erected metal detectors at the gates to the Muslimadministered site last week after Arab gunmen killed two Israeli police guards there two days earlier.
The move incensed the Muslim world, amid allegations that Israel was trying to expand control over the site under the guise of security - a claim Israel denies.
The installation of the metal detectors set off widespread protests and deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence over the past week. Large crowds of Muslim worshippers prayed outside the shrine n protest every day, refusing to pass through the metal detectors.
Israel has denied it has a hidden agenda, portraying the metal detectors as a needed security measure.