Mid-East Realities

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RELIGIOUS WAR EMERGING IN THE HOLY LAND

July 28, 2001

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 7/28: In the years since the turn of the millenium the Arab-Israeli conflict is being transformed into an even more dangerous and potentially cataclysmic Muslim-Jewish war. Ariel Sharon's "visit" to the Temple Mount last year, accompanied by a huge military force, helped sparked Intifada II -- make no mistake about that. And now the anticipated "symbolic" cornerstone laying ceremony for the Third Jewish Temple, whether it actually takes place this Sunday or not at this point, is fueling the transformation of the conflict in the once Holy Land into a religious confrontation with untold consequences for the future. Here's how the Israeli right-wing, now the dominant force in Israeli political life, reported the situation yesterday ISRAELIS TO HOLD SYMBOLIC THIRD TEMPLE CORNERSTONE LAYING PALESTINIAN MUFTI, MEDIA, CALL FOR VIOLENCE [Arutz 7 - Israeli news source affiliated with settler movement - 27 July 2001]: "The Palestinian media and the Mufti of Jerusalem are inciting the Palestinian masses to "physically defend the Temple Mount from the Zionists." The call comes in response to a Supreme Court ruling this week permitting the Temple Mount Faithful to hold a symbolic cornerstone laying ceremony for the Third Temple near Dung Gate this Sunday, Tisha B'Av. The Mufti, Akrameh Sabri, told the Itim news agency that he would call on Palestinian masses today, in his weekly sermon in the Al Aqsa mosque, to respond with force to the ceremony. Sheikh Sabri added that the Supreme Court decision is only the first of a series of steps that will lead to the placement of "that cornerstone" on the Temple Mount itself, and that the Moslems must therefore prevent it. Similar calls were made on Palestinian media today."

At the time of the Six-Day War David Ben-Gurion himself was extremely worried what Israel's victory could lead to. He in fact favored not occupying the West Bank and Gaza but rather returning those areas to the local population and arranging some kind of joint administration over Jerusalem which the Israeli Army had just conquered in total for the first time. And it was General Moshe Dayan himself who on his first visit to what the Jew's call the "Temple Mount" soon after it was captured ordered the Israeli flag removed and told the Islamic Authorities that they would retain full administrative control of the area (though in other parts of Jerusalem, especially in the area below the Temple Mount, Dayan ordered wholesale confiscation and destruction of the Arab properties which lead to the large plaza area at the foot of the "Wailing Wall" and the modern-day "Jewish quarter" within the walled city of old Jerusalem).

Now in recent years there is the emergence of Hamas, Hezbollah, suicide-bombers, Osama bin-Laden on the Muslim side, and the rise to power of the most fanatical and racist elements within Israeli society and world Jewry on the other. Much wiser and worldly Israeli and Jewish leaders tried hard to prevent these very developments -- in addition to those already mentioned Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, Nahum Goldman, Philip Klutznick. They failed.

The Palestinians are terribly oppressed today and suffering immensely. The Arab peoples are nearly everywhere impoverished, impotent, and in most countries controlled by brutal "client regimes" empowered by the dominant Westerrn countries. But the Jewish people of Israel, powerful and relatively wealthy as they are at the moment, have created a situation full of historical injustices and moral contradictions; and they are now fueling social hatreds and religious tensions which they will not forever be able to contain. It is a situation that is unsustainable. It is a situation more and more pregnant with the seeds of eventual disaster, maybe even the seeds of another kind of Holocaust.

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Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/309.htm