Moving the match away from the powder keg

Better late than never: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remembered to ban politicians, whether Jews or Arabs, from going to the Temple Mount. The step is one of the wiser moves taken in Israel in the past few years and one can only wonder what would have happened in September of 2000 had then prime minister Ehud Barak announced a similar step and banned opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the site — a precursor to the Second Intifada.

The compound, called Haram a-Sharif by the Palestinians, has always been considered a powder keg. The trouble is that despite, or perhaps because of its volatility, politicians, whether Palestinian or Israeli Arab or Jewish, have always tried to leverage it for political gain. The Israeli public and the media may not be too bothered by the sequence of events, but the latest wave of terrorism started after Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel and several dozen Jews went to visit the Temple Mount on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

That incident was not the main reason for the current upsurge but it certainly was the spark that started the fire. Since then, the Temple Mount became a focal point of intensified hostility and hatred between the sides. Hamas and the Islamic Movement had a field day with Ariel’s pilgrimage and presented it as an attempt to change the status of Muslims on the Mount. Joining them in the chorus were Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and, as has become inevitable, Arab Israeli lawmakers.

MK Jamal Zahalka, chairman of Balad, one of the parties making up the Joint (Arab) List, is head of a decidedly secular party, with both Muslim and Christian members, and yet he decided one day last week to block with his very body the entrance of Jewish worshipers to the Temple Mount.

All of a sudden Balad, never considered an Islamist party, cares so much about the al-Aqsa Mosque, it warms the cockles of the heart. The prohibition issued Thursday morning by the prime minister (and promptly challenged by Zahalka moved even the head of the Joint List, Ayman Odeh, to quickly announce that the Arab MKs will not heed Netanyahu’s ban. The secular Odeh (who was filmed having lunch in the middle of Ramadan recently) is not considered an Islamist, to put it mildly.

And of course another usual suspect waded in: Sheikh Raed Salah, head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, for whom creating provocation relating to the issue of the Temple Mount is a life-long project. Salah was quoted by Arabic media outlets on Thursday (he refrains from giving interviews to Jewish outlets) as saying that “to die for al Aqsa is a great honor… They cannot scare us with jail or deportation.”

But the politicians from the Palestinian side are not alone. There are not a few on the Jewish side who have tried and will continue trying to make quick political gain from the violence. Netanyahu’s decision does not mean that Jews cannot go to the Temple Mount: People who have no “vested interest” can still do so. But those who look for publicity and provocations just to make it into the news editions will from now need to find another powder keg to set their matches to.

A final comment on incitement: After countless accusations from the Israeli government and rightwing politicians that Abbas is inciting to violence, officers from the IDF’s Military Intelligence explained Wednesday that things are not as they seem. They talked of the important role Abbas plays in efforts to restore the calm.

A similar occurrence happened several months ago, when Shin Bet security service chief Yoram Cohen, a man not suspected of being a left winger or liking Abbas too much, said the Palestinian president is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

So could this Palestinian leader be a partner in negotiations after all, or are the IDF and the Shin Bet throwing dust in our eyes again?