Since taking Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, Israel has always shown caution and restraint when it comes to the Temple Mount. In particular, prayer on the Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, has been barred to Jews. In recent weeks, Palestinian leaders have been spreading unfounded rumors of a threat to the status quo—a self-evidently false pretext for mounting numbers of terrorist attacks. Recently, Israeli security discovered stockpiles of bottles, stones, and Molotov cocktails in the al-Aqsa Mosque itself. Jerusalem is on the brink of a conflagration, writes David Horovitz:

Amid the awful current upsurge in terrorism and violence in Jerusalem—the shooting of Yehudah Glick, the spate of “suicide driver” attacks, the riots in East Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, the clashes on the Temple Mount itself—it has been profoundly dismaying to watch interview after TV interview with Palestinian bystanders in stone-strewn Arab neighborhoods, older men not involved in the violence, urging Israel just to stay away from al-Aqsa, not to pray at al-Aqsa, to do anything but encroach upon al-Aqsa. At the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism, it is clear, the Jews have no legitimacy whatsoever for many ordinary Palestinians.

Hamas, for whom Israel has no legitimacy at all, is doing everything it can to whip up passions around the falsely alleged dangers to al-Aqsa, inflating and exaggerating and misrepresenting every spark of friction in the hope of igniting the holy war it seeks in order to bring about Israel’s demise. So, too, provocateurs within Israel’s own Arab community—notably in the northern branch of the Islamic Movement. Some Arab Knesset members are also guilty of exaggerating and mischaracterizing the true dimensions of what has been playing out in and around the Temple Mount in recent weeks. The increasingly extremist Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been adding fuel to the fire.

When he called upon Hamas to end the war and release the hostages last week, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was also getting ready for a reshuffle within his regime. On Saturday, he appointed Hussein al-Sheikh deputy president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is intimately tied to the PA itself. Al-Sheikh would therefore succeed Abbas—who is eighty-nine and reportedly in ill health—as head of the PLO if he should die or become incapacitated, and be positioned to succeed him as head of the PA as well.

Al-Sheikh spent eleven years in an Israeli prison and, writes Maurice Hirsch, was involved in planning a 2002 Jerusalem suicide bombing that killed three. Moreover, Hirsch writes, he “does not enjoy broad Palestinian popularity or support.”

Still, by appointing Al-Sheikh, Abbas has taken a step in the internal reforms he inaugurated last year in the hope that he could prove to the Biden administration and other relevant players that the PA was up to the task of governing the Gaza Strip. Neomi Neumann writes:

Abbas’s motivation for reform also appears rooted in the need to meet the expectations of Arab and European donors without compromising his authority. On April 14, the EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas approved a three-year aid package worth 1.6 billion euros, including 620 million euros in direct budget support tied to reforms. Meanwhile, the French president Emmanuel Macron held a call with Abbas [earlier this month] and noted afterward that reforms are essential for the PA to be seen as a viable governing authority for Gaza—a telling remark given reports that Paris may soon recognize “the state of Palestine.”

In some cases, reforms appear targeted at specific regional partners. The idea of appointing a vice-president originated with Saudi Arabia.

In the near term, Abbas’s main goal appears to be preserving Arab and European support ahead of a major international conference in New York this June.