Palestinian leader halts security co-operation with Israel over mosque dispute

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said he had halted security cooperation with Israel after authorities refused to remove metal detectors at the entrance to al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, raising fears of an escalation of violence. 

The halt came after a bloody weekend in which three Israelis were murdered by a Palestinian in a West Bank settlement and four Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli forces, in some of the worst violence in recent years. 

The Palestinian attacker, Omar al-Abed, wrote on his Facebook before the attack that he wanted to “die for al-Aqsa”.

In an apparent escalation on Sunday night, two Jordanians were killed and an Israeli wounded in a shooting incident at the Israeli embassy in the Jordanian capital Amman. 

The two Jordanians, working for a furniture firm, had entered the embassy compound before the shooting, the police said in a statement. 

Israel has imposed a ban on reporting the incident and has made no public comment.

A source declined to give any details as police sealed off the heavily protected embassy in an affluent part of the capital.

Mr Abbas said that by taking the decision to stop coordination he hoped to force the Israelis to remove the gates, as well as regular incursions by the Israeli army into cities in the West Bank ostensibly under Palestinian control.

Israel said it would not remove the metal detectors, which were introduced after three Israeli Arab gunmen killed two police officers at the entrance to the site earlier this month, and installed further security cameras at the site.  Security coordination between the two authorities was last halted during the Second Intifada, and reintroduced when Mr Abbas came to power in 2005.

Israel security services have said that such coordination was vital in reducing a wave of violence that broke out in October 2015. But the cooperation is deeply unpopular among many Palestinians, who see it as a form of collaboration with the Israelis that serves only Israeli interests.  

Israeli defence minister, Avigdor Liberman, downplayed the cessation in comments to the Israeli news site Ynet. “That’s their decision. It's not like the security coordination is an Israeli need. It's a Palestinian need first and foremost. If they want it, they'll continue, if not they won't … We’ll manage either way,” he said.

But the move has come after a week of mounting tensions in which Islamic religious authorities in Jerusalem have led protests against the placement of the new metal detectors, which many consider to be a in violation of access agreements at Islam's third-holiest site. 

Authorities have called on worshippers to boycott the mosque until the Israelis take away the new gates. Initially peaceful protests on Friday descended into large-scale rioting in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Violent unrest continued on Saturday night after police broke up protests in Jerusalem.

The Palestinian ministry of health said that one protester had been shot and killed on Saturday evening. In a statement released on Sunday morning, the Islamic authorities in Jerusalem rejected the imposition of any new security measures at all at the site. 

Messages on Palestinian social media have been circulating calling for the boycott to continue.

The Israeli security cabinet was due to meet on Sunday evening to discuss possible alternatives to the metal detectors. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, earlier condemned the murder of the Israelis, saying that the family home of the "loathsome terrorist" would be demolished.