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Bloomberg
Confrontations over a contested Jerusalem shrine turned more violent, with three Palestinian protesters killed in clashes with Israeli security forces and three members of a Jewish family stabbed to death in a West Bank settlement by a Palestinian assailant.
The diplomatic fallout from new Israeli security measures at a shrine in Jerusalem’s Old City also intensified as the Palestinian Authority served notice that it was cutting off all contacts with Israel, at a time when the US administration is trying to restart peace talks. Israel installed metal detectors and security cameras at the site after two Israeli policemen were killed there last week by an Israeli Arab gunman.
The six deaths escalated tensions that have been seething in Jerusalem and have spilled over into the West Bank and Gaza Strip because of conflicting narratives over the new
security arrangements at entrances to the Al-Aqsa mosque complex, known to Jews as Temple Mount. Israel says they are purely a security precaution but Muslims opposed to their presence view them as a tightening of Jewish control over the site holy to both faiths. Muslims across the world have demanded the devices be
removed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had considered taking them down at the advice of the army and internal security service, but the government left the decision to police, which favored keeping them in place.
The hilltop compound lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and competing claims to the site have made it a frequent flashpoint for violence. Home to Islam’s third-holiest shrine and venerated by Jews as the site of their biblical temple, it is located in the eastern sector of the city that Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war and Palestinians seek for a future capital.