President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority said the suspension of ties and security coordination with Israel would also continue until Israel removed all additional security measures from the area and pending an examination of the situation, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency. Mr. Abbas spoke at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah before a leadership meeting.

“Now everybody is mobilized,” said Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian professor and expert in national security at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem. “This is multidimensional,” he said, adding, “Everyone wants to be part of the political equation.”

Mr. Qaq said he believed that calm could be restored if Israel removed every trace of the new equipment it had installed. But pointing to the volatility of the site and its centrality particularly for the Palestinians of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, he said, “Al Aqsa is the last place left for people to express themselves religiously or politically.”

The true test of where things are going may come on Friday. On regular Fridays tens of thousands of Palestinians from Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Arab citizens of Israel, come to pray at the site.

The crisis began on a Friday, with a brazen attack on the morning of July 14, when three armed Arab citizens of Israel emerged from the compound and fatally shot two Israeli Druze police officers who were guarding it. In a rare move, Israel temporarily closed the holy esplanade to conduct searches and quickly installed metal detectors and cameras at some entrances to the site, which is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.