Arabs hurl molotov cocktail on Temple Mount, damage Israeli police post

Amid rising tensions on the holy site, police say arrests were carried out and the Mount was closed to allow for searches.

By World Israel News Staff

More violence was reported on the Temple Mount on Tuesday, amid rising tensions over recent weeks.

An Israel Police statement said that “three suspects who hurled a molotov cocktail at a police post on the Temple Mount were detained,” adding that “the police post was damaged.”

The Jerusalem police commander subsequently ordered the Mount closed to allow for searches to be carried out.

No injuries were reported.

Tensions have been especially high since the Waqf Islamic authority, which operates the Muslim holy sites, breached the Gate of Mercy on the Mount last month. The gate had been closed by Israel in 2003 because it said that a Hamas-linked organization had taken control of the site and was acting against the interests of the Jewish State.

Jordan, which serves as a patron of the Muslim sites under the terms of its 1994 peace treaty with Israel, recently bolstered the Waqf with Palestinian members loyal to the Kingdom over fears that U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan, expected to be announced after April’s Israeli parliamentary election, would marginalize the Jordanian role on the Mount.

According to a report in the Israel Hayom newspaper, the U.S. wishes to see a broader Muslim religious body, apparently with representatives from a number of countries, set up to oversee the Temple Mount, operating in cooperation with Israel as part of the ultimate American vision for the status of Jerusalem. The area would remain under Israeli sovereignty, according to the report on the American plan.

The Jerusalem Magistrates Court ruled last week that a structure set up by the Waqf at the Gate of Mercy would be shuttered pending a response by the Islamic authority to a petition submitted by the police and district attorney’s office.