Israeli sovereignty over the Old City has ?been further diminished.

By Jonathan S Tobin, ISRAEL HAYOM

There is no way to see the outcome of the standoff over metal detectors at the Temple Mount as a triumph for Israel’s government. After first refusing to remove them despite threats of Palestinian demonstrations and violence, and then seeing the beginning of what might be a new “stabbing intifada,” the reversal in response to what amounts to blackmail from Jordan will not help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity, although it may help him in Washington.

No matter how it tries to spin the measures that will replace the detectors as providing the same or better security, it still looks as though the Israeli government surrendered to violent threats. The same Palestinian Authority that fomented this controversy and that should be held responsible for the bloodshed – the original terror attack at the Temple Mount that killed two policemen and the subsequent slaughter in Halamish as well as the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Amman – will claim victory.

The Palestinians have once again proved that they can exercise a veto over Israeli policy in Jerusalem even in the aftermath of a bloody terror attack and a reasonable decision to heighten security. Israeli sovereignty over the Old City has been further diminished. That will allow both Netanyahu’s critics to his right as well as centrist and left-wing opponents to decry what they are calling poor crisis ?management and weakness.

But if there is one silver lining in a cloud-filled sky, it is the way events have served as a tutorial in the complexity and irrationality of the conflict for the Trump administration. The president needs to realize that his ambition to leverage Saudi and Jordanian influence over the Palestinians into brokering the “ultimate deal” is a hopeless quest.

The sequence of events demonstrated that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is not a real estate transaction in which compromise and smart negotiating can achieve a result. The willingness of Palestinians to take to the streets and even murder Jews over the detectors is proof that the core issues are not territory, settlements or security measures, but existential and religious concerns that are not currently susceptible to compromise.

Whether U.S. mediator Jason Greenblatt’s arrival in the region encouraged a solution in the aftermath of the attack on the embassy is unclear. Greenblatt may have provided American cover for the resolution of the standoff in which the safe return to Israel of an embassy guard who shot a terrorist attacker was traded for the detectors’ removal.

But if Greenblatt, the president, or a State Department that continues to recycle the same myths propagated by the Obama administration thinks the moral of the story is that more or better U.S. diplomacy will provide a path to a peace agreement, they weren’t paying attention to what preceded Netanyahu’s retreat. Everything that led from the initial terrorist attack to the decision to take down the metal detectors testifies to a conflict that is rooted …read more

Source:: Israpundit

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