Israel welcomes, Palestinians suspicious of al-Aqsa monitoring
Netanyahu says cameras could help 'disprove the claim that Israel is changing the status quo' at the Temple Mount; PLO official Erekat says Israeli PM wants to 'monitor and arrest our people, he is lying and lying.'
Palestinian officials reacted warily on Sunday to what US Secretary of State John Kerry hailed as Jordan's "excellent suggestion" to calm Israeli-Palestinian violence by putting the Temple Mount under constant video monitoring.
"This is a new trap," Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on Voice of Palestine radio, accusing Israel of planning to use such footage to arrest Muslim worshipers it believes are "inciting" against it.
Kerry, who met Jordan's King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman on Saturday, said Israel gave assurances it has no intention of changing the status quo at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, which is holy to Muslims and Jews.
Muslim fears, amplified in social media, that Israel seeks to lift its long-standing ban on Jewish prayer at the site, have fueled a three-week-long wave of Palestinian stabbings in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli cities. Israel has repeatedly denied the allegation.
In the past five weeks, 10 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks, mostly stabbings, while 49 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, including 28 attackers and the rest in clashes.
Palestinians are also fuming over what they see as excessive use of force by Israeli police and soldiers. Israel says it is justified in using lethal force to meet deadly threats.
Kerry, stepping up diplomatic efforts to stem the worst Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed since the 2014 Gaza war, said Israel had accepted a proposal by Jordan's monarch, custodian of the al-Aqsa compound, for round-the-clock monitoring by cameras.
'Game changer'
Such surveillance, Kerry said, "could really be a game-changer in discouraging anybody from disturbing the sanctity" of the al-Aqsa site, which Israel captured along with the rest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War.There was no immediate comment from Abbas. Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said Abbas had told Kerry "that he should look into the roots of the problem - and that is the continued occupation".
In violence on Sunday, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded an Israeli near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The wounded man fired at the assailant, who fled, and the Palestinian Health Ministry later said a Palestinian was hospitalized after being shot by an Israeli.
Speaking to his cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel "has an interest in cameras being deployed everywhere on the Temple Mount" to refute claims that it is changing the status quo.
Jews revere the site as the location of two destroyed biblical Jewish temples. For Muslims, it is the Noble Sanctuary and Islam's third holiest place.
"The Temple Mount will be managed as it has been until now. The visits by Jews to the Temple Mount will be maintained, there will be no change, as with the prayer arrangements for the Muslims," Netanyahu stressed.
Netanyahu said such surveillance on the plaza - where stone-throwing protests against Jewish visits often break out - would also "show where the provocations are really coming from" and to thwart them from the outset.
"He (Netanyahu) wants to install cameras in order to monitor and arrest our people, he is lying and lying," Erekat said.
Azzam Khatib, director of the Jordanian Waqf, the religious body that runs the site, said the footage would be streamed on the Internet "so the world would see what is going on inside Al-Aqsa."
But a Jordanian intelligence official said the arrangements announced by Kerry have not yet been discussed in detail.
A US official said Israeli and Jordanian technical officials would discuss who would conduct the video monitoring, but no date for consultations was announced.
In addition, many key questions remain - including when the system will go into effect and who will do the monitoring. Israeli police already maintain hundreds of security cameras in Jerusalem's Old City.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
