• This is why Arab states are conspicuously silent on Temple Mount crisis - Israel News - Haaretz.com

    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.802834

    The Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, like the Kaaba in Mecca and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, is an Islamic site that is inseparable from the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are sites that, when harmed, spark public outrage that can put the regimes in Arab and other Muslim states on a collision course with Islamic movements in their countries.
    It also puts them in conflict with a sensitive Muslim public that can delegitimize closer ties between Israel and Arab countries, and places them in conflict with a secular Arab public that views the events as a deliberate attempt by Israel to take over Palestinian sites.
    The recognition of people power and the threat that Arab public opinion poses is one of the most important by-products of the Arab Spring, particularly when it concerns Israel and the holy sites. Such matters constitute a loose, but perhaps only, common denominator that these parts of public opinion share.
    Up to now, the Arab and Muslim rage in these countries has not been translated into public displays in the form of mass demonstrations or harshly critical articles. Events on the Temple Mount over the past week or so have indeed garnered headlines in most of the Arab world, but at this point – for possibly the first time – we haven’t seen the customary anti-Israel protests on the streets of Cairo, Amman and Morocco.