The trigger for the attack on a Jerusalem synagogue remains unclear. Amid months of unrest, the list of possibilities is long.
The choice of target — unarmed Jewish worshippers at prayer — raises the prospect that a conflict that began as territorial and political is morphing into religious war. That fear has been in the air for some time. Israeli security officials have repeatedly warned that religion must be kept out of the conflict.
Those warnings were ignored as Israeli right-wing politicians and activists sought to change the status quo over Jerusalem’s holiest site. Israel’s chief rabbinate itself forbids Jews from entering, far less praying at, the site “due to its sacredness”.
Few ultra-Orthodox Jews, like those attacked at prayer, would break that injunction. Not