Posted on 03/09/2004 5:16:39 PM PST by HarleyD
JERUSALEM (RNS) The Temple Mount, which has been remarkably quiet for the past year, could again be on the verge of an eruption.
That is the fear after hundreds of Muslims praying Feb. 27 on the Temple Mount hurled rocks at Jews praying at the Western Wall below. Israel, which maintains security but not administrative control of the Mount, deployed riot police to restore order and instructed Jews to leave the Western Wall, located just below the mount, to avoid injury.
According to local reports, the rioters were protesting the construction of Israel's controversial security barrier. Israel says it needs the wall to stop Palestinian terrorists from committing attacks in Israel. Palestinians say "the fence" is Israel's attempt to limit their movement and to annex their land.
Although calm was soon restored to the sacred site, this incident highlights just how central the Temple Mount is to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"It's the ground zero of the Middle East conflict," said Yossi Klein Halevi, an Israeli political analyst. "The heavy, heavy Israeli security presence is what's keeping a lid on the violence."
The Temple Mount, which Jews call "Har Habayit" and Muslims "Haram al-Sharif," is arguably the most disputed piece of real estate in the entire Middle East.
Jews consider the mount, which according to Hebrew Scriptures is the site of the destroyed first and second Temples, to be their holiest shrine. Muslims built the Al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock atop the temples' ruins, to commemorate Muhammad's ascent to Heaven. It is the third-holiest shrine in Islam. Christians also venerate the mount because Jesus visited the temples, according to the New Testament.
Tensions are always at or near the boiling point, and occasionally boil over into violence.
In 1951, while the mount was still under Jordanian rule, a Muslim assassinated Jordan's King Abdullah, also a Muslim, as he entered the Al Aqsa Mosque. In 1969, a mentally ill Christian tourist torched the mosque, causing serious damage and Muslim distrust of non-Muslims.
In 1990, Israeli police killed more than a dozen Muslims during a riot prompted by rumors that Jewish extremists were plotting to destroy the mount's mosques. Muslims rioted again in 1996, resulting in 80 deaths, most of them Palestinian, when Israel opened an ancient tunnel to tourists. At the time, Muslim clerics charged that the tunnel desecrated the mosque.
The most recent deadly clashes occurred in September 2000, immediately after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel's opposition Likud Party, toured the mount to assert Jewish claims over it. The visit fanned the flames of a simmering Palestinian uprising, which came to be known as the Al Aqsa intifada.
As soon as the uprising began, the Wakf – the Islamic religious trust that administers the mount – closed it to non-Muslims. "There was a huge siege around Jerusalem and Muslims could not come and pray at the mosque," says Adnan Husseini, director of the Wakf.
"How could we allow visitors and tourists to visit the mosque when the Israelis did not allow Muslims to pray there?"
Yet in a development that even many Israelis are still unaware of, the Israeli government quietly reopened the mount in May 2003. More than 10,000 non-Muslims have visited without incident, according to the police.
To this day, it is still unclear exactly how and why the mount was reopened. Husseini insists that "it was opened by force by the Israelis. It was not the Wakf's decision. This is a place for Muslims to pray, not a museum to be visited."
Although Israeli officials have remained mum, some political analysts believe that the Wakf gave its tacit approval to the move.
"There were those who thought that reopening the site would cause a renewed explosion, and I think that was a reasonable fear," says Gershom Gorenberg, author of "The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount."
"Since there was no explosion, I presume that there were contacts between the sides. Perhaps it was a peace gesture, an attempt at a thaw," Gorenberg theorized.
Regardless of the reason, "permitting non-Muslims to visit is nothing more than returning to the past status quo," Gorenberg notes. "Until Ariel Sharon decided he could prove he could go to the Temple Mount, Jews and Christians could go there."
Observers warn that tensions between Jews and Muslims over the separation barrier and other political developments in the region could soon reignite the mount.
"Arafat's prestige is at an all-time low," says Gerald Steinberg, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Affairs at Bar-Ilan University, who believes that the Palestinian leader is searching for a new cause to rally around.
Citing "intelligence sources," Steinberg says that "Arafat is trying to regain influence and attention, and the Temple Mount and Jerusalem have always been flashpoints that have worked in the interest of the Palestinians."
Yet even without such a directive from Arafat – a directive Palestinians insist is a figment of the Israelis' collective imagination – extremists on both sides are just waiting for a fight, Gorenberg warned.
"While the number of hard-core Jewish extremists is only a couple of dozen," Gorenberg says, "this minority serves to reinforce fears on the Muslim side, both religiously and politically."
In the Arab world, "the mount has become the symbol of the Islamic revival, as well as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism," Gorenberg said. "Go into any office in East Jerusalem and you'll see a drawing of Al Aqsa. The greater the fear of a Jewish threat to destroy the mosques and build a temple, the stronger the Muslim attachment to the site is."
Halevi, meanwhile, blames the Islamic clergy on the mount for exacerbating the ever-present tension.
"Every Friday there are the most incendiary anti-Semitic sermons broadcast from the Temple Mount, even though the Wakf itself has not been inciting violence. The potential for this verbal violence being translated into physical violence is always present," Halevi says heavily.
To maintain calm, Israeli police routinely enforce a decades-old agreement with the Wakf that forbids non-Muslims from praying out loud there. Visitors are subject to a thorough security check -- they must go through metal detectors and have their bags inspected for weapons -- and are forbidden to bring prayerbooks.
"We do not let extremists from any side, Jews or Arabs, cause public disorder. The minute this happens, we remove them," says Shmuel Ben-Ruby, a police spokesman.
Mat 24:15 "Therefore when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),
I've always thought this was a person but after looking closely at these verses and the one in Daniel, I'm not so sure.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.