What Israel-haters claw at to refute is the truth: that Israel has always wanted to live peacefully alongside Palestinians. And in fact, Israel has made every effort to do so only to have its overtures rebuffed by various Palestinian leaders throughout this decades-long conflict. 

Case in point: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is, yet again, subverting an opportunity for peace and above all, safety, by officially halting all security cooperation with Israel concerning tensions at the Temple Mount (al Aqsa mosque). The Telegraph reports:

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.

Islamic religious authorities have been inciting protests over the installation of metal detectors, claiming they violate past agreements over access to the holy site. We're not quite sure how metal detectors impede anyone's access aside from those with nefarious intentions. 

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.

In the meantime, Palestinians on social media are calling for further boycott and are perpetuating the usual vitriol against Israel.