Israel will ‘inevitably lose’ if security coordination halted, PA chief says

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says Israel will ultimately suffer for the freeze in security coordination with the PA.

In comments quoted Sunday by the official PA news site Wafa, Abbas says he took an uneasy decision to halt security coordination over the placement of metal detectors at gates to the Temple Mount.

“They don’t have a right to place the [metal detectors] at the gates to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, because sovereignty over the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque is our right…. So we took a decisive and firm stance, especially with regard to security coordination and all kinds of coordination between us and them,” Abbas says.

“This decision we took to stop all kinds of coordination, whether security or otherwise, is not easy at all. But they (the Israelis) have to act and know that they are the ones who will inevitably lose, because we are doing a very important duty in protecting our security and theirs.”

Abbas says that coordination can only return if Israel reverses security measures at the Temple Mount compound put in place after the July 14 deadly shooting attack by three Arab Israelis at the site in which two Israeli policemen were killed.

He adds that he wants to see the Israeli military ceasing all incursions into Palestinian cities.

— Dov Lieber