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Foreign Minister Yair Lapid |
Robert Spencer : The violence spread later to the streets of East Jerusalem and to the
West Bank town of Ramallah, where six Palestinians were reportedly hurt
as Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets and protesters hurled
rocks and firebombs.
‘‘I brought a message of
peace,” Mr. Sharon said after a one-hour tour of the Temple Mount that
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, condemned as a ”dangerous action”
against Muslim holy sites.
‘‘I believe that Jews
and Arabs can live together,” Mr. Sharon declared as stones and
rubber-coated bullets flew at the holy site. ”It was no provocation
whatsoever,” he said of his visit. ”It’s our right. Arabs have the right
to visit everywhere in the Land of Israel, and Jews have the right to
visit every place in the Land of Israel.”
The Palestinians, who had been looking for an excuse to start
a massive upsurge in violence against the Israelis, found it in
Sharon’s visit. In fact, he had done nothing more than visit, as Jews
had been doing since 1967, the Temple Mount. He did not enter, nor get
near, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He did not say, or silently mouth, a Jewish
prayer. He did not make any provocative statements. But his mere
appearance was enough for Palestinians to start rioting, throwing stones
at Sharon and his party, with the violence then spreading to east
Jerusalem and Ramallah, where Palestinians threw not just rocks, but
also firebombs at Israeli police.
The visit of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid at the beginning of April
did not go anywhere near the Temple Mount or Al-Aqsa. He went near to,
but not right in front of, the Damascus Gate, which has often been the
site where Palestinians have gathered to attack the Israeli police and
Jewish civilians. Lapid made no provocative remarks, but appeared near
the Damascus Gate to do one thing: to thank Israeli police for their
tremendous efforts, during a period of great tension, to keep the area
calm after three separate Palestinian terror attacks left 11 Israelis
dead, in Beersheva, Hadera, and Bnei Brak. The Palestinians had cheered,
and yelled the takbir, and handed out sweets, to celebrate the murders
and the murderers. Surely, that was the true “provocation” – the murders
of innocent Israelis and the ghoulish celebration of those murders —
that deserves to be recognized. “Hamas: Israel to ‘bear consequences’ of
Lapid’s Damascus Gate visit,” JNS, April 8, 2022:
“The storming of the
Damascus Gate by the foreign minister of the Zionist enemy, Yair Lapid,
is a dangerous escalation, and the occupation will be responsible for
its consequences. We and our people pledge to protect Jerusalem and
Al-Aqsa Mosque,” said Hamas in a statement.
Neither Lapid, nor anyone else in his party, went onto Temple Mount,
and certainly never got anywhere near Al-Aqsa Mosque. There was no
“storming” of the Damascus Gate. Lapid didn’t enter the Old City through
the Gate. He left the Old City alone. Instead, he walked calmly – no
“storming” was observable –near the Gate, where members of Israel’s
security services had gathered, to thank them for their service and to
express the country’s appreciation, amid a spike of violence and unrest –
those 11 lives lost in terror attacks – that coincided with the start
of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on April 1. There had already been a
night of rioting near the Damascus Gate before Lapid showed up, giving
the lie to those who insisted that Lapid’s visit had provoked violence.
Of course, the Palestinians were ready, just as they had been in 2000
when Ariel Sharon had visited the Temple Mount, to turn this visit,
which took place outside the Old City, into a reason to riot, and to
attack Israelis throughout Jerusalem. Sure enough, a few hours after
Lapid’s visit, riots broke out in the area for the second consecutive
night, with rioters hurling bottles, rocks and other objects at police.
One officer was wounded, according to police. An officer was also
wounded during Saturday’s riots, having been struck in the head by a
bottle.
“This is a tense time, but we have
a police force that can be trusted,” Lapid said in a statement on
Sunday evening. “The security forces have our full backing. They work
professionally in impossible conditions. We are committed to them and
will give them all necessary resources,” he added.
On Sunday, the
Israeli government authorized the allocation of 181 million shekels
($56.5 million) in emergency funding to the Israel Police. The budget
supplement was authorized “in light of the significant challenges that
Israel’s police force currently faces and given the operational gaps
that have accumulated in recent years,” according to an official
statement.
Also on Sunday, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff
Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi said that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist
organization in Gaza may launch missiles at Israel’s south in
retaliation for Israel’s elimination on Saturday of a PIJ terrorist cell
in Jenin, according to Channel 13 News.
Three PIJ terrorists were
killed and four Israeli forces were wounded, one seriously, in a
counter-terror operation early on Saturday morning in Judea and Samaria.
According
to senior Israeli security officials, the cell was preparing to cross
into Israel to carry out an attack in the center of the country similar
to the one on March 29 in Bnei Brak, in which five people were killed.
Yair Lapid walked calmly to the microphone set up in the vicinity of
the Damascus Gate, to honor members of Israeli security forces who had
been working for 24 hours straight to contain Palestinian rioters. Those
rioters, it needs to be emphasized, had begun their rioting long before
Yair Lapid showed up; his visit could not have possibly been the cause
of their riots. But the Palestinians didn’t care about the truth;
hysterical cries about his “storming” of the Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa
itself spread round the city; stories about Lapid defiling the Al-Aqsa
mosque whipped Arabs in Jerusalem into a frenzy; they hurled rocks and
Molotov cocktails at Israelis in response to the news of this entirely
fictive outrage.
Thus has the story of Lapid’s brief appearance outside the
Old City metamorphosed, in the telling of the Palestinian propagandists,
into this: “Lapid’s outrageous storming, with Zionist soldiers of the
Al-Aqsa Mosque, where they beat innocent worshippers, will be avenged,”
or words to that lying effect. For the Palestinian leaders trying to
whip up murderous hatred, and to justify their own terror attacks, even
the least offensive of outings can be turned into something monstrous.