Israel Police allowed visitors to continue their tours of the Temple Mount Sunday morning despite efforts by Arab extremists to prevent their entry with renewed violence.
Palestinian Authority teens wearing masks began hurling rocks at the security personnel on the Mount Sunday morning.
The violence appeared to have been a repeat of a familiar tactic aimed at manipulating police into again cancelling visits by Jews and other non-Muslims to the site.
As they did last week, however, Israel Police again instead moved the perpetrators into the Al Aqsa Mosque, where the security forces created a physical barrier to protect visitors from the attackers.
Tours of the site – considered the holiest in the world in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam – continued through the morning hours as usual.
The strategy is a new one: in the past, it was the visitors to the Temple Mount whose rights were abrogated and the rioters whose violence was given priority.
Last week, however, Israel Police changed direction and instead began protecting visitors to the site by blocking the violence perpetrated by Arab rioters. The attackers were moved by security personnel when they began hurling projectiles, and remained contained within the mosque so that non-Muslim tourists could visit the site safely.