It's about time.
Hanegbi: Jewish extremists may attempt to blow up Temple Mount
By Ellis Shuman July 25, 2004
Internal Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi warned yesterday that Jewish extremists may try to carry out an attack against Arabs or the mosques on Jerusalem's Temple Mount in order to torpedo Israel's planned unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
"We sense that the threat level on the Temple Mount by extremist and fanatic Jewish elements... has increased in the last few months, and especially in the last few weeks, more than any time in the past," Hanegbi told Channel Two television's Meet the Press program.
"There is no information about specific individuals," Hanegbi said, but he added that there were "worrying indications" that such plans were "not just theoretical."
Haaretz quoted security sources who said that they were dealing with possible scenarios, including an attempt to crash a drone packed with explosives on the Temple Mount, or a manned suicide attack with a light aircraft during mass Muslim worship on the Mount. Another possibility includes an attempt to assassinate a prominent Temple Mount Muslim leader, perhaps from the Waqf Islamic trust, the paper reported.
In recent weeks, the Jerusalem Police force has noticed a rise in the number of visits by extremist Jewish figures to the Temple Mount, Maariv reported. In some of the cases, the visitors attempted to stage provocations by starting to pray at the site.
Activists from the outlawed Kahane group released a statement today saying that Hanegbi was preparing the ground for administrative detentions. The police may also consider banning far-right extremists from visiting the Temple Mount, media sources reported.
Yehuda Etzion, one of the leaders of a plot in the early 1980s to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount, told Army Radio today that blowing up the Dome of the Rock was a "worthy" goal, but that it was not the proper way to fight the disengagement initiative.
MK Yossi Sarid (Yahad) called on Attorney General Menachem (Meni) Mazuz to launch criminal proceedings against Etzion for his statements. Sarid said that Hanegbi should reinstate the ban on Jewish visits to the Temple Mount due to the imminent threat, Army Radio reported.
Six months ago, Shin Bet security chief Avi Dichter said the dream by Jewish extremists to remove the "abomination" - the mosques - from the Temple Mount "should trouble us greatly."
"For the State of Israel and the Jewish people in the Diaspora, Jewish terrorism is liable to create a substantial strategic threat and to turn the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into a confrontation between 13 million Jews and 1 billion Muslims across the world," Dichter said at the Herzliya Conference.
Former Shin Bet head Carmi Gillon said today that an attack on the Temple Mount could pose an existential threat to the state's existence, the Jerusalem Post reported. "If there were to be an attack on the Temple Mount, the chances that the Muslim world will rise up and fall on us, and millions of Iranians will march to Jerusalem, are very, very high. There are limits to this game," Gillon said. "I think we need to understand that he Temple Mount needs to remain outside of this game," he added.
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