The most depressing thing about the riots on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or the Haram al-Sharif, as it is called in Arabic, is how they have revealed once again the depths of paranoia that lurk in the Muslim mind. The Jews are plotting to destroy the Muslim holy sites. The Jews are deliberately undermining the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Jews are secretly planning to raze the Haram al-Sharif and build their Temple there instead.

The Jews, needless to say, are planning nothing of the sort. What they are planning is to build a new ramp from the foot of the Western Wall to the Temple Mount high above it in order to replace the old ramp that partially collapsed several years ago and is presently in a dangerously unstable condition.

Why is such a ramp or stairway necessary? The old one serves two main purposes. One is to provide tourists, both Israelis and foreigners, with access to the Haram al-Sharif, the main entrance to which for non-Muslims is from the Western Wall. The other is to make it possible for Israel’s police to ascend easily to the mount when necessary and to storm it if they have to.

When it comes to tourists, Israel can certainly let the Waqf, the Muslim religious authority in charge of the Haram al-Sharif, make up its own mind. If it doesn’t want sightseers viewing the architectural splendors of the compound from close up, it shouldn’t be required to let them in. Israel’s only rule in this respect should be that Jews and Israelis not be discriminated against. If there is to be tourism on the Temple Mount, it has to be open to all.

Easy access for Israel’s police, however, is something else. The Temple Mount traditionally has been a powder keg for anti-Jewish riots, often whipped up by Friday sermons in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and rioters have not only frequently poured forth from it into the alleys of Jerusalem but also often have stoned Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below. To encumber police from getting up to the mount quickly and safely is to risk even worse disturbances than have occurred in the past.

Indeed, the Temple Mount always has been an explosive site, long before there were any Muslims or Islam. In the days of the Second Temple, when the Jews of Palestine were under Roman occupation, anti-Roman riots broke out there on many occasions. One of them even helped spark the Great Revolt against Rome that ended in the Temple’s destruction.

This is not only because of the Temple Mount’s reputed holiness, which has made it — as is the case with many shrines all over the world — a flashpoint for religious and national emotions. It is also because of its expanse, layout, and topography.

A level compound, the area of seven or eight football fields laid side by side and able to accommodate hundreds of thousands of worshippers or pilgrims, it is also the highest point in the Old City of Jerusalem, dominating everything else. Take a crowd assembled on it, already gripped by a sense of its own power and importance, and inflame it with grievance, anger, and a conviction of its religious mission, and the potential for violence is never far away.

If Israel has to choose, then, between being ultimately responsible for the security of the Temple Mount and handing over responsibility to the Palestinians, it must choose the former.

The Waqf and the Palestinian Authority are both too weak and too implicated in the present chaos of Palestinian society to be entrusted with such a task.

But there is a third possibility, too, and it is too bad that Israel has never considered it more seriously. This would be, in the absence of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, to turn to a third, Muslim party and ask it to take charge of the Haram al-Sharif in the meantime.

This could be Jordan, or Saudi Arabia, or even the Arab League. Israel could offer it extraterritorial control of the compound with only one condition attached: that it exert true control and make sure the Temple Mount stays peaceful.

Even for an Arab country like Saudi Arabia that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, this would be a hard offer to refuse. Indeed it would be especially hard for the Saudis, inasmuch as the possessors of Islam’s foremost shrine in Mecca, they have always presented themselves as the defenders of Islam and its holy places everywhere.

How explain to the world’s Muslims that a Jewish state is willing to make one of their most sacred sites an extraterritorial enclave under Muslim rule and that no Muslim government or organization is prepared to cooperate?

For Israel, such an arrangement also would have clear advantages. Not only would Israel be freed from the need to police the Haram al-Sharif and from the accusation that it is planning to destroy it, it would be relieved from the nightmarish specter of being blamed if fanatical Jews ever did, in their hope of restoring the Temple, attempt to damage or blow up the Muslim shrines standing in the way.

Above all, ceding control of the Temple Mount to Muslims might reassure even some of the paranoids in the Muslim world that Israel has no evil designs on the area. Although the last thing any sane Jew or Israeli wants, whether he is secular or religious, is to see the Temple rebuilt in premessianic times, this is something that Muslims have difficulty grasping. A Muslim flag flying over the Temple Mount, and Muslim policemen patrolling it, might go a long way to calming their fears.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.