October 27, 2015

If you are eagerly waiting for the video cameras to be installed on the Temple Mount, as Israel and Jordan agreed to do recently, in the hope that this act will help restore law and order at the holy site — don’t hold your breath. 

First, because the cameras have not yet been installed, and obstacles could still prevent them from being installed (or they can be destroyed soon after being installed). 

The Palestinians already expressed their objection to the cameras. Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister, “told the Voice of Palestine that the plan was a trap, because Israel would use video footage to arrest Muslim worshipers it claims are inciting against it,” according to The Guardian. So the question remains: Will the Palestinians cooperate with the decision and, if not, would Israel (and Jordan) be able locate effective cameras without such cooperation? 

The second issue is it is not at all clear that the cameras could change the dynamics on the Temple Mount, even if they are installed and even if they become operational.

The cameras are one item out of several understandings reached by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State John Kerry and Jordan’s King Abdullah. The Palestinians were disappointed by these understandings, and that is not surprising — they gained little from the recent wave of violence. Israelis to the right of Netanyahu were also disappointed, and that is also not surprising — Netanyahu has committed himself and Israel to a status quo that these right-wingers would like to change.

Gen. Yaakov Amidror, formerly the national security adviser to Netanyahu, wrote last week that “it is important that the current escalation wanes without a Palestinian achievement, especially when it comes to the Temple Mount. We must avoid fueling tensions on the already volatile site, so the government and the police are doing the right thing by limiting access to it. However, once order is restored, the status quo should be resolutely enforced. Israel’s strategy has to make it clear that violence reaps no rewards.”

So the question for both sides really is whether keeping the status quo — whether Israel’s declaration that it “will continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount” — is a “reward” for those perpetrating violence.

It will not come as a great surprise to discover that the answer to this question depends much on the political tendencies of the respondents. Those who want to change the status quo see the agreement as caving under pressure. Those opposing change see it as merely stating the obvious: Israel never intended any change. Those who want a change see no reason why Israel should restate its acquiescence to a settlement that is inherently flawed. Those opposing change see no reason to risk more violence and expect their government to behave responsibly.

Last year, in an article I wrote for The New York Times, I explained, “Today, there is a status quo, supported by manipulation and intimidation. The Temple Mount can easily ignite a wave of Jewish-Arab violence. And two very different groups hold the fuse: the calculating Palestinian leadership, and a reckless and growing section of the Israeli Jewish street.”

Obviously, one of the great debates we have today is whether the recent violence is because of the actions of the first group or the second group. On the one hand, we have evidence with which to support the first claim: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his friends spreading lies about Israel’s intentions, and calling for Jews not to desecrate the holy site with their “dirty feet.” On the other hand, we also have evidence with which to support the second claim: Minister Uri Ariel and his juvenile insistence on making Temple Mount provocations.

I also wrote, in another article, that Israel’s prime minister has recently been finding “himself in an awkward situation. Benjamin Netanyahu is known abroad as a staunch right-winger. But now he needs to do the exact opposite of what his image suggests.” 

This is an often overlooked fact that is yet again at play today: Netanyahu — the leader who the world sees as a staunch belligerent — is in fact the least hawkish member of his own government (supported by Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon and Shas leader Aryeh Deri). 

Ariel and other members of Habayit Hayehudi and Likud (including Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely) can keep talking about the unjust arrangement at the Temple Mount, they can keep wishing for this arrangement to change for the better, they can keep complaining — with good reason — about the outrageous behavior of Palestinian leaders (including the political leadership of Arab Israelis). Netanyahu pretty much ignores all of it, or even rebukes the insensitive members of his cabinet when necessary, and does what he thinks is necessary to avoid more bloodshed and more violence.

Is that a good thing — to ignore these complaints and accept a far-from-perfect arrangement on the Temple Mount? Here is what I wrote last week for Israel’s Maariv Daily: “In a ‘just’ world, the Jews would have retained the right to be able to visit the Temple Mount. But Israel does not operate in a just world, it operates in a world of power, in a world of measured calculations of cost and benefit. And in such a world it needs to constantly remind itself that rights, like all things, are subjected to hierarchy. There is the more important, and there is the less important. Often, those who insist on having everything end up having nothing — just ask the Palestinians. 

“So Israel has to keep insisting on telling the true story of the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. But alongside the right to tell, and the right to visit and the right to insist — alongside these many ‘rights’ — it is necessary for Israel not to neglect its ‘obligations.’ Chief among them: the obligation to keep its secured future as a Jewish state, even if such a goal requires the temporary abandonment of this or that ‘right.’ ”