JERUSALEM — The Israeli police shot lifeless an Arab man on Saturday morning in entrance of an entrance to essentially the most outstanding holy website in Jerusalem, in an episode that risked escalating tensions within the metropolis at an already risky time.

The police stated in an announcement that officers had detained the person over a separate incident, earlier than he seized and fired a police officer’s gun, main them to kill him in self-defense. The police described the person as a terrorist.

In a conflicting account, Palestinian information media reported that he had been killed throughout a scuffle after he had intervened to stop the assault of an Arab girl. Neither model could possibly be instantly corroborated.

The taking pictures occurred on the threshold to the Aqsa Mosque compound, a website sacred to each Jews and Muslims. The location has been used as a mosque for greater than a millennium however is understood to Jews because the Temple Mount, as a result of it was the placement in antiquity of two historical Jewish temples.

The lifeless man was recognized by the police as a 26-year-old from Hura, an Arab city in southern Israel.

His taking pictures risked setting off a brand new spherical of unrest on the website, which each Israelis and Palestinians take into account an important a part of their nationwide narratives. Clashes steadily happen there throughout moments of wider tensions within the area — notably in the course of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began per week and a half in the past.

Confrontations on the website in Could 2021 contributed to the outbreak of an 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militia that controls the Gaza Strip.

For months, diplomats and officers have warned of the potential for one other flare-up on the compound throughout Passover and Ramadan this yr, which this coming week will converge, for less than the second time in three many years. The overlapping festivals will drive extra Jews and Muslims to the location than normal, elevating the chance of confrontation — notably if the police proceed to permit Jewish activists to hope there, in contravention of a decades-old conference.

Israel captured the location from Jordan in the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1967 and later annexed it. For years, the Israeli authorities prevented Jews from praying there, leery of angering Muslims. However lately, the police have begun to tacitly permit it, heightening Palestinian resentment.

Jews take into account it the holiest spot in Judaism, whereas Muslims consider it was the place from which the Prophet Muhammad rose to heaven.