On Thursday, thousands of mourners attended the funeral of Border Police Superintendent Jadan Assad, from the Druze village of Beit Jan. The 38-year-old officer was killed when Hamas member Ibrahim al-Akri — a resident of east Jerusalem and the brother of one of the terrorists released in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit — purposely plowed his minivan into a group of pedestrians at a Jerusalem light rail station, then left the car and went after police with an iron pipe.

Assad is survived by a pregnant wife and toddler. He is being honored in Israel for his dedicated service protecting innocent Israeli citizens.

Al-Akri, shot down during his terrorist rampage against innocent Israeli citizens, is survived by a wife and five children. He is being lauded by the Palestinian Authority as a hero and a martyr for sacrificing his life in the pursuit of mass murder.

Thirteen other innocent people were wounded in the vehicular attack, the latest fad in PA-backed terrorism.

The most recent excuse for the steady crescendo in Muslim violence against the “Zionist enemy” (including patriotic non-Jewish Israelis like Assad) is the desire of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Though the holiest site in Judaism, it also houses the Al-Aqsa mosque. This is why it is periodically employed as a propaganda tool to arouse Muslim wrath and international sympathy.

The start of the Second Intifada in 2000, the war of attrition characterized by daily suicide bombings in Israeli population centers, was falsely attributed to a visit to the Temple Mount by then-Opposition leader Ariel Sharon. In fact, not only had Sharon been given a green light by PA security chief Jibril Rajoub to arrive that day, but the “spontaneous eruption” of Palestinian violence throughout the country had been planned meticulously for months in advance.

The current throwing of rocks, firecrackers and Molotov cocktails that keeps being referred to in the media as a response to one incident or another is no different. It began with the kidnapping and slaughter of three Israeli teens in the summer; it continued throughout Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and it has been going on unabated since then.

The real reason for what the PA threatens will be a third intifada is not one of cause and effect, however. It is not about the Temple Mount. It is not about the addition of Israeli housing or the purchase of apartments by Jews in an Arab section of Jerusalem. Nor is it about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu any more than it was about Sharon.

No, the root cause is what it always has been: the Muslim aim to wipe out the Jewish state by any and all means available. And the real impetus behind every flare-up is the “peace process” toward a “two-state solution” that the PA has no intention of achieving. Buoyed by the assertion on the part of the Obama administration, Europe and the U.N. that Israeli “occupation” is to blame for “unrest” in Palestinian society, PA President Mahmoud Abbas is even able to shed his cloak as a leader who can be reasoned with and openly side with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

He is also able, through his official print, broadcast and social media, to encourage his constituents to kill Jews, while providing the religious justification for doing so. This week, for instance, Fatah’s Facebook page has been full of pictorial praise for hit-and-run terrorist attacks.

As was reported by Palestinian Media Watch, a cartoon was posted on Thursday urging people to “hit the gas at 199 [kilometers per hour] for Al-Aqsa.”

The cartoon is titled “The Run-Over Organization,” a play on the Arabic word for “run over” and the acronym for Islamic State.

That Abbas would be more sympathetic to Islamic State than interested in reaching peaceful coexistence with Jews is further proof (if any were needed) that nothing Israel does, other than ceasing to exist, will suffice for him. In spite of his suit and tie, he is an Islamist through and through.

It was thus more than a bit amusing to hear what PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told reporters during a joint news conference with his Czech counterpart, Lubomir Zaoralek, in Ramallah on Thursday.

“If Israel will continue in the current policy, this will lead to an unknown confrontation based on a religious background, which will not stay in Al-Aqsa or Jerusalem, but will move the confrontation out of Palestine [to the Islamic world],” he said.

This is a typical convoluted inversion of the self-evident truth that the PA is part and parcel of global jihad. It is this message that is conveyed in mosques across the world. Al-Aqsa simply has the benefit of being on the Temple Mount.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'” This article was originally published by Israel Hayom.

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