Following the 2017 Temple Mount shooting on the Friday the week before the attack in which three Muslim Israelis attacked and killed two Druze policemen outside and inside the Temple mount, Israel increased security measures in the area before the entrances of the Temple mount, including placing metal detectors. Muslim leadership refused to accept the new measures, and called on their followers to protest the new measures, and to pray in front of the Temple mount declaring that prayers of those who pass through the metal detectors are null and void. In rioting on the day of the attack three Muslims were killed in and around Jerusalem.