Photo Credit: courtesy, Israel Police
Police sapper holds pipe bombs found at the entrance to the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount. (2015)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reiterated Thursday night in a conversation with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that Israel has no interest in changing the status quo on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Israel is, however, acting against the escalating violence being perpetrated by Palestinian Arabs at the sacred site, he told Ban.

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“Israel is strictly maintaining the status quo, Palestinian incitement to the contrary notwithstanding,” Netanyahu told Ban, according to a statement issued by the prime minister’s media adviser.

Both the United States and Jordan have weighed in on the issue, as well as Saudi Arabia; all have expressed deep concern about the increasing violence at the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism, and the third holiest place in the world for Islam. Jordan has custodial rights over the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem in accordance with the terms of the 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Within the past two days, an unconfirmed threat was allegedly issued against Israel by the Arab League, warning there would be “consequences” if the violence at the Temple Mount did not cease.

However, since it is the Palestinian Arabs themselves who are inciting the violence and perpetrating it as well — under the Islamic Waqf Authority which is administered under the custodial rights of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan — one can hardly expect a Jewish nation to have more power to end the violence than the Jordanian monarch himself, other than through force of arms.

Security personnel meanwhile have been placed on high alert status in advance of Friday’s “day of rage” declared by Gaza’s ruling Hamas terror organization in solidarity with rioting Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem.

At least 14 Israeli police officers have been injured this week in violent clashes with Arab attackers at the Temple Mount and around the Jerusalem area.

Sixty-four-year-old Jerusalem resident Alexander Levlovitz was murdered earlier this week by Palestinian Arab terrorists who hurled rocks at his car, smashing his windshield and sending the vehicle careening out of control. His wife and daughter were injured as well.

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Hana Levi Julian is a Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition to her years working in broadcast journalism.