It is easy to blame the current mess in east Jerusalem and regarding the Temple Mount on Police Chief Kobi Shabtai as well as on the political class.
Shabtai appears tone-deaf to broad strategy, let alone geopolitics. The existing transitional government seems unable to manage almost anything besides fighting the forming of a new government.
But the problem is likely much broader and goes to the heart of whether the police should be the body responsible for something as complex as the Temple Mount.
Even if the police do remain as the body with boots on the ground in such sensitive areas, should they be making their own strategy? Or should the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the IDF, which have much broader repertoires, experience and vantage points, give the police directives on wider mission issues?
Of course, there are plenty of actors on the Palestinian-Arab side – including Hamas – who wanted to hijack some smaller disputes and utilize them to light the region on fire.
It is not that the police caused the uptick in violence.
But they certainly ran headfirst, full-speed, guns blazing into the trap that was set for them, when the Shin Bet warned them to take a different path.
The police placing new barriers near the Old City Damascus Gate was one of the issues hooked onto by those extremists on the Palestinian-Arab side. Those players, who perhaps were hoping to blow up the region, had their sights set beyond the 300 people in Sheikh Jarrah whose homes are on the line. The barriers themselves – at a simpleton’s tactical level – maybe made sense to those on the beat.
The police were worried about more mischief and protests getting out of hand as the Sheikh Jarrah dispute heated up. The barriers would help them maintain order.
Also, at a purely tactical level, it is correct that this was not the first or only time police have placed barriers there.
But at a strategic level, the Shin Bet and the IDF warned the police that this was a massive blunder.
It was pouring gasoline on the fire instead of trying to douse it.
It played into the narrative of extremists on the other side who wanted to frame what is going on in Sheikh Jarrah as an imminent war to take over Arab east Jerusalem and holy sites as opposed to an incremental move in one spot in Sheikh Jarrah.
However larger and rowdier the crowds might have been given the existing tension over Sheikh Jarrah, placing the barriers in such a sensitive spot had the impact of causing much larger and angrier crowds.
When planning strategy, the proof is in the pudding: the result.
If the goal of placing the barriers was to get greater control, then it was a dismal failure.
Incidentally, the police subsequently bent to the protesters’ will, removing the barriers. But they did this without negotiating or explaining to ensure calm afterward and ended up having to bring the barriers back.
Next, it is still unclear what exactly happened and in what order on the Temple Mount and in the situation with blocking buses on Route One over the weekend.
Yet, it is clear to viewers that those on the Temple Mount making trouble were able to claim – with selective video footage – that the heightened police presence and actions caused the uproar.
ONCE PROTESTERS attack police, the police must restore order.
But there are ways to restore order, while trying to suck some of the oxygen out of the fight, by signaling a mix of carrot/restraint and stick/strength.
Is there any doubt that the police shooting stun grenades into holy places on the Temple Mount is something that usually does not happen even when there is a disturbance and that it was a very undesirable result?
Is there any doubt that pictures from police conduct on the Temple Mount radically shifted the messaging against Israel, even among Jerusalem’s allies globally? Such images leave little room for careful technical arguments.
The police on the ground were not thinking about geopolitics. They were thinking about clearing the square or the street the same way they might in a random city in the north or the south – and that is where they are missing the big picture.
It would be simplistic to blame everything on Shabtai and the current political class however poorly they have handled the current flare-up.
Shabtai has botched a number of issues recently, but other police chiefs and officials have messed up similarly in the past.
For nearly two weeks in July 2017, the Temple Mount, Israel and the region were lit on fire after the police, over the objections of the Shin Bet and the IDF, inserted metal detectors onto the Temple Mount.
Once again, the police had a rationale at a tactical level.
Days before installing the metal detectors, two Israeli policemen were shot and killed by Israeli-Arab attackers who had concealed weapons on the Temple Mount.
The police reasoned that if terrorists were upping the ante and were ready to bring firearms to the Temple Mount, then they needed metal detectors to stop them.
And for someone with a little strategic perspective, there would seem to be no reason that Arabs cannot be sent through metal detectors to enter the Temple Mount when non-Muslims have had to do so through a separate entrance for years.
But geopolitics is not always rational. And the stakes are so high that results matter far more than what might make sense in a vacuum.
The Shin Bet and the IDF saw that the outcome of the metal detectors would be a far worse blow up, bringing about more violence and more harmed police and Arabs than would a more subtle approach.
Also, like with the barrier installation and its removal at the Damascus Gate, the police did not communicate with the Temple Mount Waqf to coordinate the rollout.
In contrast, Shin Bet chiefs, and sometimes IDF officials, are known for meeting with a variety of foreign officials, sometimes even adversaries, and achieving a nuanced balance where all sides can claim some victory, save face and calm down.
None of this is to say that the Shin Bet or the IDF do not make errors or do not themselves sometimes disagree.
But in multiple cases in recent years, they have been right when the police have been wrong. This is because they have been thinking multiple moves ahead on the chessboard, while the police’s vision has been limited to what was right in front of them.
Whether a new specially trained elite Israeli force should handle some of these Jerusalem areas and the Temple Mount or whether the police should have boots on the ground, but take strategy from the Shin Bet and the IDF, both directions would likely get better results than that which occurred in recent rounds.