While the Arabic media is focusing on many of the key rifts between Arab states, regional leaders used this week’s Arab League Summit in Kuwait City to unite in their calls for “Jerusalem” to be the capital of a Palestinian state and for Israel to stop its assault on the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. The notion that Israel is undermining the Muslim de facto control of the Temple Mount is far from the truth, with Jerusalem enjoying unparalleled religious freedom for Muslims and Christians, as enshrined in Israeli law.

A month ago the Palestinian Authority asked the Arab League to hold an emergency session regarding Israel’s policies on the Temple Mount. There however is no evidence to suggest that Israel is in anyway acting as a destabilizing force, indeed, Israel’s police force regularly bans Israelis from entering the Temple Mount in order to maintain calm and respect the status quo. It also enforces a permanent ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple mount.

Despite Israel’s attitude to the Temple Mount, the issue is regularly used to stir up the masses locally and across the Muslim world. Myths about alleged Israeli actions against the Temple Mount are commonplace from organizations such as Hamas and the Israeli Islamic Movement and lead to anti-Israeli protests in many Muslim countries.

In 1996, riots erupted when Israel’s Antiquities Authority began excavating an ancient tunnel system that runs parallel to the Temple Mount. The incident left 14 Israeli security officers and 69 Palestinians dead. Many more Palestinians and Israelis were injured.

When Israel gained Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967, then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan immediately pledged control of the site to the waqf Islamic trust, and despite all of Israel’s might it has never reneged on that promise.

The State of Israel does just about everything, in both its statements and its actions, to make clear that it has no intentions of building the Third Temple or destroying the Temple Mount mosques. All this has in no way prevented the many-faceted “Al-Aksa is in danger” libel from developing and taking hold of the imaginations and hearts of hundreds of millions of Muslims.