Holy places work like pieces of a broken bottle on dry glass: they focus the light and heat of religious political and personal passions on a single flammable point.
Flames erupt.

@DanielSeidemann @sarahposner

No other holy place focuses as many people's passions as the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa does. Add a bit more heat and the fire begins.

Sacred dates add one more lense focusing the furies. Combine a sacred date and a sacred place and the risk of conflagration is extreme.

The Israeli govt is far from being solely responsible for all of the passion focused on the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa. But having chosen, insisted, on being the political power exerting power there, it's responsible for keeping the flames from breaking out.

Bizarrely, while history is responsible for how flammable the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa, amnesia about the danger sets in quickly.
A bit more than 20 yrs after the holy place igniting a long & terrible conflict, our govt acted as if it knew nothing of the dangers.

Have written so many times about how holy places & dates start conflicts. To write it again gives me a profound sense of the uselessness of words and warnings. I despair.

What makes the Temple Mt/Al-Aqsa even more likely to start fires is that there people on both sides of the religious/national conflict who believe in violence, yearn for it - and know where to ignite it.
And those responsible for preventing fires keep ignoring or forgetting this.

Al-Aqsa is a particularly convenient detonator for Hamas. It's an explicitly religious, implicitly national symbol that serves a national-religious movement - just as the Temple Mount serves national-religious Jewish extremists.

Therefore, a smart Israeli govt would do all it can to avoid adding any sparks at Al-Aqsa. Current govt did opposite.