| Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - Sunday, 7/29/2001: It was "radical" groups that emplanted themselves in the city of Hebron a long time ago, back in fact when the Labor party was still supreme in Israeli affairs. And just look today at that city where the common forefather of both the Jews and the Arabs is buried.
Indeed, the Israelis have a long history now of using subterfuge and "radicals" to push their way forward; transforming what was once the province of a few supposedly on the fringe into a settlement here and a vital security issue there.
It was the "radical" Vladimir Jabotinsky, nemesis of David Ben-Gurion, who was exiled by the British and whose dead bones were not even let back into Israel until the Likud came to power; but he is today the revered ideological founder, a kind of Israeli Lenin, with more streets to his credit in the Jewish State than Ben-Burion himself! It was indeed a portrait of Jabotinsky -- not that of Theodore Herzl and certainly not that of Ben-Gurion -- which was on the wall behind Ariel Sharon on the day he took the oath to become Israel's latest Prime Minister. [So please, stay tuned for much more from MER about Jabotinsky and his living legacy in the days ahead].
At the moment, Americans have been warned to stay away from Jerusalem this weekend, and for American officials the city has been put officially off limits for the first time in memory. Ariel Sharon's visit to the "Temple Mount" last September, complete with a virtual army of troops to guard him, ignited Intifada II and buried the already moribund "peace process". Today's events "laying the cornership for the Third Temple" near but not yet on the "Temple Mount" may unleash hatreds, passions, and fears with untold devastating consequences for the future.
(WASHINGTON - CNN - 28 July) -- The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, has placed Jerusalem off limits to staff members and their families over the weekend, citing "the possibility of civil unrest or terrorist threats" related to the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'av, the State Department said Friday. The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem has likewise placed the Old City and surrounding downtown areas of both East and West Jerusalem off limits to staff members and their families. Tisha B'av, which runs Friday through Sunday, commemorates the destruction of the first and second temples. The announcement reminded American citizens to "exercise extreme caution" and to avoid shopping malls, public buses, bus stops, crowded areas and demonstrations throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Embassy personnel are prohibited from using public buses, it said. "American citizens should maintain a low profile and take appropriate steps to reduce their vulnerability," the statement said.
The plan to build a new Jewish temple on the Muslim mosque compound in Jerusalem is feared to ignite an all-out regional war
JERUSALEM (Agence France-Presse, 28 July) - Israel and the Palestinians were bracing for a potentially bloody showdown Sunday over one of the Muslim world's holiest sites, where a provocative visit by Israel's radical Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set off the Palestinian Intifada (uprising) 10 months ago, when he was then an opposition leader. Almost 565 Palestinians have died since the start of Intifada as the Palestinian people fight the Israeli occupation of their land, 130 Israelis died as well.
Ahmed Maher, the foreign minister of Egypt -- one of just two Arab countries, along with Jordan, to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state -- warned Saturday of a worsening conflict in the Middle East, citing the plan to build a new Jewish temple on the mosque compound in Occupied Jerusalem. He called on the Israeli government to take steps to prevent it.
The announcement by a group of Israeli militant rabbis to lay the first stone for the temple is "a provocation which adds to numerous earlier Israeli provocations contrary to international legality," Maher said in comments to the press. "The Israeli government must take steps to stop this provocation which risks worsening a situation that is already very tense as a result of the Israeli policies pursued up till today," he added.
Also in Cairo, the banned Muslim Brotherhood Saturday condemned the silence of Arab and Islamic governments in the face of the planned Jewish action.
"This criminal Jewish action against one of the most sacred sites of Muslims comes amid appeals for help from Muslims in (Occupied) Jerusalem... who have not managed to mobilize Arab and Islamic governments to save Al Aqsa (mosque)," the group said in a statement.
Arab and Palestinian leaders have warned that the ceremony by Israeli ultra-nationalists radicals in Occupied Jerusalem could set off a long-feared war in a region wracked by non-stop bloodshed since September.
"Israel has not learned from its own dangerous mistakes," Hanan Ashrawi, the former Palestinian cabinet member and new spokeswoman for the Arab League, told an Occupied Jerusalem press conference on Saturday.
"Israel is deliberately throwing the whole region into conflict and we advise them not to take such a dangerous step, because Israel itself might not be able to control the consequences," she said.
The so-called Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement won approval from the Israeli supreme court this week to lay a symbolic cornerstone for a new Jewish temple at one of the gates of the occupied city, near the Israeli-claimed place of the ruins of the historic Second Temple.
But it denied the group permission to lay the stone at the site itself, which is the home to the third holiest place in Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque compound where the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven.
"In not permitting us to enter the Temple Mount, the authorities prolong the tragedy of the Jewish people," the group's leader Gershom Salomon claimed after the court ruling Wednesday.
With nerves frayed and tempers at fever pitch as 10 months of violence have claimed hundreds of lives, most of them Palestinian, Arab officials around the region said the ceremony was another dangerous step toward all-out war.
"This is considered an unjustified provocation for the Muslim nation and a violation of the sacred character of Al-Haram Al-Sharif," Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib said.
The laying of the cornerstone "will lead to a dangerous escalation and Israel must bear responsibility for it," he said in a statement.
Marwan Barghouti, head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, said: "It's a declaration of war... this will lead to a reaction not only in the region but around the world."
The Intifada began after Sharon paid a provocative visit to the compound which many analysts saw as a bid by the former general to oust then prime minister Ehud Barak, whose peace talks with the Palestinians had fallen apart.
Sharon went on to crush Barak in February elections in the midst of the uprising, with a pledge to take a hard-line approach in dealing with the Palestinians.
But the prime minister has been under increasing fire from Israeli right-wingers who deplore his self-declared policy of "restraint," including a June 13 ceasefire brokered by the United States aimed at getting the two sides back to negotiations. More than 50 people have been killed since then.
| Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/312.htm |