Tension increased on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount over the weekend after waqf, the site’s Islamic custodian body, forced open a building at the edge of the compound that had been closed by Israel in 2003 and its head was arrested for questioning by police.
The forced entry by the waqf into the Bab a-Rahma building was seen as another attempt to assert their control, 16 years after it was closed by Israel over its use by an Islamic association aligned with Hamas.
After Israeli police barred the doors once more, supportive Palestinians returned and broke the doors open. Since then, police have refrained from evicting them, responding instead with the arrest of the waqf’s Secretary General Sheikh Abdel-Azeem Salhab. He was released a few hours later.
The weekend’s events followed an uptick in the constant struggle for control of the compound between all the sides involved.
The waqf has complained that Israeli police are growing increasingly lax at imposing the status quo on the Mount, which allows Jews to visit at prescribed hours during weekdays, but forbids them from praying there.
Another recent development was the Jordanian royal house’s decision to add seven Palestinian members associated with the Fatah faction to the waqf council. The move was seen as a gesture by King Abdullah to his own Palestinian subjects living in Jordan.
The last 18 months have been relatively calim in Jerusalem, after a round of violence around the Temple Mount in the summer of 2017. But the threat of escalation remains on other fronts — such as on the borders of Gaza, where rioting has renewed in recent weeks, and in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority is furious at the Israeli government’s decision to freeze £100 million in Palestinian funds worth of funds as a sanction for the PA’s payments to the Palestinian prisoners and families of those killed attacking Israelis.
There have also been a series of riots in Israeli prisons over recent weeks during searches were conducted for mobile phones illegally held by Palestinian prisoners.
The Temple Mount has been a flashpoint in the past for outbreaks of violence across Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
