Partners For Peace Anytime Soon

"Al-Aqsa Mosque is ours. They have no right to desecrate it with their filthy feet. We won't allow them to do so and we will do everything in our power to defend Jerusalem."
"We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem. This is clean and pure blood, blood that was spilled for God. It is Allah's will that every martyr will go to heaven and every injured person will receive God's reward."
"We will not give in to the logic of brute force and policies of occupation and aggression practised by the Israeli government and its herds of settlers who engage in terrorism against our people and our holy places and our homes and our trees, and the summary execution of our children in cold blood, as they did with the child Ahmed Manasra and other children in Jerusalem and other places."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

Ahmad Manasra, one of two cousins who went on a stabbing spree in Jerusalem on October 12, 2015 is seen at the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem on October 15, 2015. Manasra was hit by a car while fleeing from the scene of the attack. (Courtesy)

"Palestinians widely viewed Mr. Abbas's speech ... at the United Nations General Assembly as tacit approval for defiant, violent attacks against Israelis."
"'He gave a green light for the attacks'," [the conclusion reached by a quoted Arab psychologist in Jerusalem]."
The New York Times

"I'd be perfectly open to it [meeting with the PA's Abbas] now. I think it's potentially useful  because it might stop the wave of incitement and false allegations against Israel."
"I'd be open to meeting with Arab leaders and the Palestinian leadership in order to stop this incitement and set the record straight."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The sacred site in East Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, which is the holiest symbol in Judaism as the site of the two Temples of Solomon is revered by Muslims as the mount from which the Prophet Mohammad, sprang to heaven on a white steed, and they call it the Noble Sanctuary. Upon which, over the archaeological ruins of the successive Temples sits the Dome of the Rock, and nearby the al-Aqsa mosque, where millions of Arabs make pilgrimages annually, to pray. Christians also revere the site and pray there.

Jews, on the other hand, are strictured by custom in an agreement intended to keep the peace, from approaching the Temple Mount and may do so only in restrained numbers, but even so they are forbidden from praying there; their act of piety would enrage the irascible Muslims who feel only they have the right to pray at the site. The Palestinian Authority has been circulating incitements to violence against Israel based on their contention that the Temple Mount and the Temples never existed; the area is sacred only to Islam, the presence of Jews an abomination that cannot be tolerated.

And so, spoken and physical violence began escalating as Muslim men and women in groups harassed and threatened any Jews courageously determined enough to present themselves at the third holiest site in Islam. Events spiralled out of control as violence escalated and Israeli authorities took steps to disarm the offenders and protect their intended victims. PA authorities and Mahmoud Abbas in particular, went to lengths to further inflame passions.

The end result of which was related to the long buildup of teaching impressionable Palestinian children through school curricula, television, songs and other provocations that the Jews are the enemies of the Palestinians, illegally on land belonging to them, which must be wrenched away and given back to the Arabs. Inspired by calls to martyrdom, young Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem have launched lone attacks using knives and other penetrating devices to kill Jewish civilians.

A Pew Center poll taken in 2014 concluded that 46 percent of Palestinian society feel that suicide bombings against Israeli Jews are fully justified. Facebook pages of Palestinians show images and videos urging knife attacks, carrying precise instructions how best to carry out attacks to achieve success. The PA has openly and vociferously accused the government of Israel of imminent designs to destroy Muslim worshipping rights on the Noble Sanctuary and to desecrate the al-Aqsa mosque.

A 13-year-old Palestinian boy who carried out a stabbing of an Israeli boy of 13, was shown in a brief video writing in agony on the ground, surrounded by Israeli police. The Palestinian boy had been run over by a car, injuring one of his legs. A video circulated showing the boy, bleeding and in great pain, surrounded by Israeli civilians in the presence of the police, cursing the boy and stating he should die. And this was the boy whom Mahmoud Abbas was alluding to, that he had been killed by police.

Ahmed Manasra, 13, a Palestinian accused in a stabbing attack on a Jewish boy, also 13, is being treated in an Israeli hospital in Jerusalem for his injuries. (Government Press Office)

In fact, he is being treated in an Israeli hospital, the Hadassah Medical Center. The boy, Ahmed Manasra along with his 15-year-old cousin Hassan stabbed two Israelis. Hassan was shot by police and Ahmed was struck by a car. The video shown on Palestinian media sites doesn't show Israeli police dispersing the crowd and taking the boy to hospital. Nor does it show him with his cousin stabbing two Israelis before being stopped. And obviously quite deliberately so. "He tried to kill and murder. But the complete opposite is presented in a twisted way", observed Mr. Netanyahu.

Israel released security camera footage showing the two Manasra cousins with knives, chasing a terrified man through a Jewish area of East Jerusalem. Then there's a shot of the Israeli boy standing in a candy shop, getting on his bycicle, then falling off his bike, stabbed. The older Manasra youth had lunged at two armed policemen when they attempted to take him into custody, and was shot for his efforts.

"We thought in the beginning that he [Ahmed] was killed. Then the information we had was that he is clinically dead", said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat. And, despite now knowing the reality of the situation, nothing has been said to correct the original impression and inform Palestinians that the 13-year-old attacker is alive and well and recovering in hospital.