The terms of the arrangement the Americans helped secure may have been unavoidable. Israel had erected metal detectors at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount after three terrorists killed two policemen at the shrine. Palestinians considered that reasonable measure an offense to Islam, leading to protests and a bloody terrorist rampage that left three Israelis dead in the West Bank and an attack on the Jewish state’s embassy in Amman, Jordan.

The embassy attack, in which the wounded security guard shot the assailant and a bystander, created a furor that was a direct result of the ginned-up outrage about Jerusalem. But when Jordan’s government demanded that the victim — the security guard — be tried for murder, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pushed into a corner. With prodding from Trump’s team, he agreed to take down the detectors in exchange for the guard’s freedom and what he hoped would be an end to the violence.