Jerusalem's Temple Mount — home to the holiest site in Judaism and one of the holiest in Islam — is closed for the first time in at least 14 years, and possibly since Israel took over east Jerusalem in 1967. The reason is that fears of large-scale political violence are rising in the city. After months of clashes between Arab residents and Israeli police, an operative allegedly with Islamic Jihad attempted to αssαssιnαtҽ a far-right Jєωιѕн activist on Wednesday, raising tensions to critical levels. Some analysts are already calling this the start of a third intifada, though others say it's far too early to tell.

So how did Jerusalem get so bad? What happened, and what's going to happen next? Here's a guide to the Jerusalem conflict.

Much of the violence has been spontaneous. Arab residents of East Jerusalem — who are residents of Israel, but overwhelmingly not citizens — have taken to the streets, throwing rocks and firebombs at Israeli police (who responded with force that, in some cases, may have been excessive) and attacking the city's light rail system. But to understand this story, you have to go back to before this summer's Gaza war.

Even before the war, street-level conflict had been a fact of life in Jerusalem. "There were 'minor' clashes for a few months" before the war, according to Brent Sasley, an expert on Israel-Palestine at the University of Texas-Arlington. "It's been ongoing for a long time."

In early July (just before the official onset of the Gaza war), 16-year-old Palestinian Muhammed Abu Khdeir was killed by extremist Israelis. Since then, the clashes have escalated severely. "It's been more or less continuous since the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir," Matt Duss, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, says. Terrestrial Jerusalem, a group that focuses on issues surrounding the city, noted in September that there had been "violence and rioting almost daily" since July.

Since then, the severity of the clashes has ebbed and flowed, depending on events on the ground. Take the massive bout of protests on the weekend of October 26. Those escalated after a 14-year-old American-Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli police at a protest that's held every week. Israeli police claimed he was about to throw a firebomb at them; the protestors dispute that.

Ultimately, the root cause of the conflict is Arab anger at the political status quo, which they see as a suffocating Israeli occupation without end. "The current eruption," according to Terrestrial Jerusalem, "reflects a number of factors, including deeper and more personalized hatreds; a generational shift; growing despair of a political solution; and the Gaza conflict." Another important factor is recent Israeli settlement expansion near east Jerusalem. Ominously, Terrestrial Jerusalem warns it's one of the worst bouts of violence in the city since 1967.