The belief that reality is a contest between narratives, rather than a series of facts, has consequences — including a lot of blood spilled in Israel and the West Bank this week.

It’s no longer just the media that at times clings to he-says-she-says evenhandedness. (Most absurdly, The New York Times recently treated as a legitimate “narrative” the denial of the historical existence of two Jewish temples in Jerusalem.) Now it’s political officials, too.

The concept was again on display Wednesday when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a speech that Israeli security forces “executed” an innocent 13-year-old boy, Ahmad Mansara, “in cold blood.”

The story has fueled Palestinian anger for days. A photo of a bleeding Mansara, lying on the ground, filled social networks and gave birth to endless angry tweets. It also, apparently, informed official statements, including at the State Department, denouncing “excessive use of force” by Israel.

Then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared it a lie.

So two competing narratives, right?

Not quite. Far from innocent, Mansara, along with his 19-year-old brother, was on a knifing rampage. Video footage from closed-circuit security cameras shows them stabbing an Orthodox Jew and then a Jewish child who left a store on his bicycle. Only later, when Mansara tried to attack two policemen, was he shot down.

Oh, and Mansara was far from “executed.” On Thursday, the government issued a photo of him being treated in an Israeli hospital.

With that in mind, maybe it’s time to also examine a more pertinent question: What led to the current round of violence? What’s it all about?

Arabs are convinced that Israel is set on destroying, desecrating or “Judaizing” Haram al-Sharif, the Jerusalem compound that includes al-Aqsa, Islam’s third-holiest site. As Abbas indelicately put it in a mid-September speech, the Jews are trying to “defile al-Aqsa with their filthy feet,” and must be stopped.

Israel points out that the arrangements that have existed since 1967, when it seized control of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, are intact, and will remain so: A Jordanian trust, the Waqf, maintains the Mount.

Jews can visit, but not pray there.

In a perfect world, of course, disputes over religious narratives would be confined to heated debates among theologians. But from Salman Rushdie to Charlie Hebdo, we’re now used to the idea that blood follows indignation over real or imagined slights to Islam.

So Jerusalem officials know, as former Knesset member Israel Hasson told Israel Radio, that “you don’t need to test the level of gasoline fumes in the air with a torch.”

Not so in Ramallah. Once Abbas presented his al-Aqsa “narrative” in September, Palestinian youths heeded his call to spill blood for Jerusalem. They drove cars into pedestrians at bus stops, cut down passers-by with knives, meat cleavers and screwdrivers and otherwise attempted to kill Jews.

If only someone could highlight Netanyahu’s vow, from every podium, that Israel has no plans to change the status quo. Or mention that to lower the temperature, he’d banned all Israeli politicians, Jews and Arabs, from visiting the contentious site. Or his offer Thursday to meet Abbas to restore calm.

Enter State Department spokesman John Kirby, who said Wednesday, “certainly, the status quo has not been observed, which has led to a lot of the violence.”

Come again? That factually challenged statement followed Secretary of State John Kerry, who has his own “narrative”: Israeli settlement expansion is responsible for the violence. (State later walked back Kerry’s statement.)

And after pressure from Israeli and Jordanian officials, Kirby also retracted, tweeting, “Clarification from today’s briefing: I did not intend to suggest that status quo at Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif has been broken. We welcome both Israel’s & Jordan’s commitment to continued maintenance of status quo at Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.”

But why’d State embrace a contention that’s so easily refutable to begin with? Alas, if narratives trump facts, Washington can pick and choose its reality, and further inflame an already tense situation.