Ramadan in Jerusalem: How a shining moment of serenity was lost
Scenes diplomats had worked hard to avoid erupted this week: Israeli police clubbing Ramadan prayergoers, Israeli civilians being killed in the West Bank, viral clips of bound-and-tied Palestinians lying facedown in the venerated Al-Aqsa Mosque, barrages of rockets from Gaza and Lebanon being answered by Israeli airstrikes, access being restricted to Jerusalem holy sites.
The ongoing violence and police crackdowns have ripped up a fragile, hard-negotiated peace – brokered by the United States, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority – that initially allowed tens of thousands to pray and observe their holidays freely as Ramadan, Holy Week, and Passover were set to coincide.
Yet the strife was less a failure of the U.S.-led diplomacy, observers say, than it was the success of extremists and far-right instigators to fan the flames of distrust in a decades-old unsolved conflict.
“Well,” sighs an Arab diplomat close to the talks with Israel over
