According to tradition, this near-slaughter took place on the Temple Mount. From its first appearance, the Mount was both holy and dangerous. It is arguably “the most sensitive kilometer on earth,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently.

It is sensitive, and strange. The area in which it is situated has been controlled by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. But the Waqf, a Muslim body affiliated with Jordan, handles the day-to-day management of the Mount itself. Unlike most other past conquerors of Jerusalem, Israel did not use the pretext of victory in the war to take full control over the Mount. Days after the war, then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan sealed a deal that has kept the Muslim Waqf in control ever since. Some Israelis believe that this was a wise decision that prevented a religious war; others think that it was poor judgment and that Israel failed to seize an opportunity — possibly because of the government’s ultra-secular tendencies that made it blind to the religious sentiments of other Jews.

This is an interesting intellectual debate that has little practical meaning 47 years later. Today, there is a status quo, supported by manipulation and intimidation. The Temple Mount can easily ignite a wave of Jewish-Arab violence. And two very different groups hold the fuse: the calculating Palestinian leadership, and a reckless and growing section of the Israeli Jewish street.

The Palestinians keep building a campaign of lies around the Temple Mount — by denying any Jewish connection to the site and alleging that Israel seeks to dismantle the mosques on top of the Mount. This campaign has an intellectual component: to present the Jews of Israel as a colonizing force that has no historic, religious or cultural claim to the land. And it has a practical component: utilizing a made-up threat to the Mount to rally the Arab street against Israel.

The campaign seems to work. In 1996, a wave of Palestinian violence erupted following the opening of a tunnel attached to the Mount. In 2000, the Second Intifada began after a visit by Ariel Sharon, then the opposition leader, to the Temple Mount. And the attempted murder of Mr. Glick is the latest example of the efficiency of this campaign to induce Palestinians to violent action.