Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told Israeli television Wednesday that he will prohibit Knesset Members from visiting the Temple Mount if he thinks doing so will endanger the public, meaning that it will anger the Arab Muslims who endanger public security.
In response, the spokesman for Housing Minister Uri Ariel, a frequent visitor to the Temple Mount, told The Jewish Press, “It won’t happen. Aharonovitch has brought up the idea before, and it is just political propaganda.”
He added that if Aharonovitch, a member of the Yisrael Beitenu party, would think about what will happen to the coalition government if he is serious about such a drastic move.
If visits by MKs “may lead to riots, I will not allow them to go,” he told Channel 1.
That is how Aharonovitch keep the public order. Don’t let the Jews “make trouble” and the Arabs won’t make trouble.
And once the Arabs understand that, Aharonovitch will have to start maintaining public security by issuing one-way tickets for Jews to leave the country
Before that happens, he has a better idea – using magnometers to screen Arabs before they enter the site.
It is not such a new concept. They were used until the intifada began to take a brief recess in the late 1990s when then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was ready to hand over almost all of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat.
Months after the magnometers were removed. The Oslo War, or Second Intifada, broke out, but no Public Security minister thought that maybe putting them back into use would keep out terrorists.
It took nearly three weeks after the attempted murder of Temple activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick for Aharonovitch to wake up and decide to use magnometers again.
Of course using them might make Arabs anger.
Rabbi Glick, whose medical condition has improved to the point where doctors report his life no longer is in danger, will undoubtedly wasn’t to thank God for his remarkable recovery by ascending the Temple Mount.
But that might incite riots.
Will Aharonovitch elevate Rabbi Glick to the status of Knesset Member and tell him to go home?
Better yet, perhaps Aharonovitch will go home.