Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem have always made clear that Israeli attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, the site also known as Temple Mount in Judaism, are a “red line” that must not be crossed, and it now seems that some Israeli state bodies and officials have picked up on this warning, Arabs48 news website reported on Thursday.
According to Arabs48, the Israeli police is one of those bodies after it recommended on Wednesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issue instructions to stop the uncontrolled statements made by his allies in the extreme right-wing over Israeli control of the Temple Mount, especially the statements calling for its temporal and spatial division, also asking him to limit intrusions into the Al-Aqsa compound.
In the same context, the president of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party and Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has called on everybody to act wisely towards the situation in Jerusalem and not to escalate the tensions. Arabs48 quoted him telling Israeli Army Radio on Thursday that: “I am in favour of wise policy. Neither I, nor members of my party have gone up to the Temple Mount. We have not issued calls for Israel to exercise sovereignty there. The problem is that people who incite and who shout only know how to light a flame and to exploit a situation for their own political gains. Calm has to be restored in Jerusalem.”
On the other hand, Lieberman joined the Israeli leadership’s assaults against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. He said: “Abu Mazen has joined the radical Islamic groups, as illustrated by the letter he sent to the family of an activist in Islamic Jihad and the financial award he provided to [that family], to encourage the Palestinian violence without a doubt,” referring to a message of condolence that Abbas sent to the family of the martyr Moataz Hijazi, the perpetrator of the shooting operation that injured the extreme right-wing Israeli activist, Yehuda Glick.
Nevertheless, Lieberman urged caution, stressing that: “The government has to find solutions without statements and inflaming actions, also without giving in to hysterical voices. I am confident that we will overcome this stage and the [ultra] nationalist wave.”