In first, Abbas halts security cooperation meetings with Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has canceled security coordination meetings between Israeli and Palestinian officials protesting the installation of metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The open-ended suspension of security cooperation was part of the more general freeze in contacts with Israel that Abbas announced late Friday, Palestinian sources said, despite initial assessments the PA president would refrain from severing the military ties.

Abbas has not ordered a severance of security ties since he was elected nearly a decade ago. Although Israel and the PA have not held peace talks for three years, cooperation between the respective security forces to maintain calm in the West Bank has been ongoing.

In announcing the break in contacts with Israel on Friday, Abbas castigated the deployment of the metal detectors at the Temple Mount compound — placed there by Israel after a July 14 terror attack in which three Arab-Israelis shot dead two Israeli police officers with guns they had smuggled into the holy site. Abbas called the measures “falsely presented as a security measure to take control over Al-Aqsa mosque.”

Palestinian demonstrators attempt to block Israeli police cars outside Lions’ Gate, a main entrance to the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, July 22, 2017. (AFP/Ahmad GHARABLI)

There were varying reports on the extent of the halt in security meetings and the effect it would have on the ground in the West Bank where Israeli and Palestinian security forces coordinate operations to thwart terror attacks and other violence. Some sources said the freeze includes all government offices and all security coordination.

At Abbas’s instruction, individual humanitarian incidents that require coordination with Israel will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis at regional coordination centers.

Abbas has in the past stressed the importance of security cooperation and in 2014 told a group of Israeli peace activists that the security ties are “sacred.”

Israel did not immediately respond to Abbas’s announcement on Friday night.

Meanwhile, the PA and the Islamic Waqf — the Jordanian body that administers the Temple Mount — conveyed to Israel via Jordan that they were not prepared to negotiate any compromise on security arrangements at the Jerusalem holy site before the metal detectors were removed, sources said.

Four Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces since Friday over the Temple Mount metal detectors, and another was killed Saturday when a petrol bomb he was planning to throw at Israeli security forces exploded prematurely.

On Friday night, three members of the Salamon family were stabbed to death in the Halamish settlement in the West Bank. The lethal terror attack unfolded when a 19-year-old Palestinian, Omar al-Abed, from a nearby village, burst into their home armed with a large knife and began stabbing the family members, who had gathered to celebrate the birth of a grandson.

The sharp escalation in violence came a week after the two Israeli Border Police officers were killed by Arab Israeli terrorists at the Temple Mount. In the wake of the attack, Israel closed the site for 48 hours as it searched for more weapons, and then installed metal detector gates at entrances to the compound.

Palestinian Muslim faithful pray next to Lions Gate, a main entrance to the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, on July 20, 2017 (AFP PHOTO / AHMAD GHARABLI)

Sources said Palestinians officials were particularly annoyed by the metal detectors since they had received Israel assurances that once the compound reopened there would be no change in the status quo.

Muslim leaders say the metal detectors mark a change to the status quo at the site. Israel says the July 14 attack showed an imperative for reinforced security measures.

The Islamic Waqf, Jordanian custodians of the holy site, opposed the presence of the metal detectors and called on Palestinians and Israeli Arabs not to enter the site to pray there.

The Temple Mount is the holiest place for Jews, as the site of the biblical temples. It is the third holiest site in Islam, where it is known as the Al-Aqsa compound or Noble Sanctuary, as the place from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.