A Third Intifada? -


JERUSALEM (AFP) - Stone-throwing youths have clashed with Israeli forces in Jerusalem and across the West Bank as protests flared again against Israeli building work near the holy city's most contentious site.

Muslim leaders have vowed to press on with demonstrations against the repair work near the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City of occupied east Jerusalem that has angered Muslims across the world.

Israel has mobilised more than 2,000 police to quash any further unrest after rioting in Jerusalem on Friday left 15 Israeli policemen and at least 20 Palestinians wounded.

Cracks have appeared within the Israeli government about whether to continue with the renovation work, which the Arab League condemned Saturday as a "criminal attack" on Islam's third-holiest site.

The prospect of further unrest loomed, with Muslim leaders warning that work near the site which Jews call the Temple Mount and is known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary could trigger a third intifada, or uprising.

"We have a full programme of protests for the coming weeks in order to stop the Israeli crimes against the Al-Aqsa mosque," said the head of the Islamic movement in Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, on Saturday.

"Continuing the work will increase the tension and anger among Palestinians and in the Arab-Islamic world," he added.

Six protesters were arrested outside the Old City's Flower Gate on Saturday and police had to rescue Canadian tourists whose bus came under attack from Palestinian stone throwers, police said.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Israeli troops arrested 30 Palestinians who were hurling rocks at Rachel's Tomb, an army spokesman said.

Clashes also erupted in the flashpoint city of Hebron and at the Qalandiya checkpoint separating Jerusalem from the West Bank, where two Palestinians were wounded, according to witnesses.

Leaders of Israel's left-leaning Labour party called for the work on a stone ramp leading to the compound near Dung Gate to halt but others insisted that Muslim leaders would not dictate policy with street violence.

"There is no reason to yield the country to a handful of extremists from the Islamic movement who want to escalate the violence," Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said.

"This ramp will be built, it is a done deal, and there will not be a third intifada as a result," said Dichter, the former chief of Israel's internal security agency, Shin Beth.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, urged the Jewish state to take the "sensitivities" of others into account over the work.

And Labour leaders called for the government to stop it altogether.

"We must reconsider this issue, even if we are right from a legal and archaeological point of view," Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh said.

"We will only defeat the Islamic extremists if we have the support of the moderate ones and this is why it is necessary to act intelligently."

The renovations are scheduled to resume next week after being suspended for the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said.

At a meeting on Saturday, the Arab League described it as a "criminal attack" on the compound and urged the United Nations and the Middle East diplomatic Quartet to act to stop what it said was threatening efforts to revive the peace process.

Israel insists the works, expected to take months, pose no risk to the holy sites and will strengthen an access ramp for the "benefit and safety of visitors" after an earthquake and snowstorm damage in 2004.

The compound, whose fate is one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is where the second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000 after a visit by then Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon.

In 1996, more than 80 people were killed in three days of Palestinian riots after then Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened a new entrance to a controversial archaeological tunnel near the holy sites.


Yaniv's commentary:

"At a meeting on Saturday, the Arab League described it as a "criminal attack" on the compound and urged the United Nations and the Middle East diplomatic Quartet to act to stop what it said was threatening efforts to revive the peace process."

The only crime here is the perpetuation of a lie which says that the Temple Mount does not rightfully belong to the State of Israel. Israel repairing an area of land that should be rightfully internationally recognized as its own is well within the bounds of what is legal. Further, I have been at southeastern corner of the Temple Mount where the Israeli government is repairing the bulge, and it is absolutely impossible to even consider that repair of that area of land that would threaten "Arab interests," which are malevolent towards Israel anyway. To situate you, the area of land is adjacent to a public street with cars whizzing by and is near a huge valley and mountain, known as the "Mount of Olives." Just like the Palestinian Authority Minister of Communications communicated to an excited audience of Palestinians that they planned the second intifada and that Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in 200o was an excuse to start it, this talk of a "third intifada" is exactly the same thing. Here's the video of that.

The Palestinians want war, the Israeli's want to repair an area of land that could possibly damage the larger infrastructure of the Temple Mount area. If the water damage continues there, according to a tour guide I know who took me and my yeshiva to that site, the entire southeastern region of the wall could collapse, and that in turn, just so the Muslims know, would likely damage the Dome of the Rock, which is located nearby.

I hope Israel stays firm to this policy:

"Leaders of Israel's left-leaning Labour party called for the work on a stone ramp leading to the compound near Dung Gate to halt but others insisted that Muslim leaders would not dictate policy with street violence.

'There is no reason to yield the country to a handful of extremists from the Islamic movement who want to escalate the violence,' Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said."

This might give you an insight into the seemingly irrational behavior of Palestinian mobs:

"In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Israeli troops arrested 30 Palestinians who were hurling rocks at Rachel's Tomb, an army spokesman said."

Rachel's Tomb is a on a hill overlooking the east side of Bethlehem, I've been there, and that site too has absolutely nothing to do with anything happening in Jerusalem, except for a desire to demonstrate violence on the part of Palestinians. To tie that into another example, when Israel pulled its citizens out of Gaza more than a year and a half ago, the Palestinians, whom were formerly screaming and shouting and killing Israeli's in order to make them leave, screamed and shouted and killed more Israeli's for them to come back! I commented on that in my previous blogs about the Gaza pullout. Why did they change their mind so quickly? Because the Palestinian national identity, which is really just a euphemism for an Arabist war tactic, realizes that Israeli cooperation with Palestinian demands means that the Palestinian "government" can make no more demands. With that realization, Palestinian attacks actually escalated in order for Israel to call off the pullout, come back to reign control over them, and then to be forced into negotiations where it could be suckered into giving back even more land. In Gaza, just like at Rachel's Tomb, legal Israeli land (a bit different from Gaza, which is considered to be "occupied"), the rock-hurdling has the intent of driving Jews away. The overall goal is, wherever Palestinians are successful in driving Jews out of, that place receives a status of "contested" and then opens up to "negotiations." Please note, Bethlehem has nothing to do with Jerusalem, it's basically an arbitrary site for Palestinians to attack, other than a strategic intifada tactic, i.e., "desperate man's invasion."

"'We have a full programme of protests for the coming weeks in order to stop the Israeli crimes against the Al-Aqsa mosque,' said the head of the Islamic movement in Israel, Sheikh Raed Salah, on Saturday."

Excuse me, how exactly is Israel's repair a crime on Al-Aqsa mosque?

"The prospect of further unrest loomed, with Muslim leaders warning that work near the site which Jews call the Temple Mount and is known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary could trigger a third intifada, or uprising."

It's not called the Temple Mount, it is the Temple Mount. It was the Temple Mount at least 700 hundred years before that mosque was erected. Doesn't anybody care about history?

The second paragraph said that it angered Muslims across the world! The truth is being exposed, it is Muslims, not Arabs, who feel effected by this - this is a religious conflict, not an Arab one, and it is sad that the majority of the world's Muslims feel obligated (and pressured) to support the "Palestinian cause" as if it were synonymous with the religion of Islam itself! For Heaven's sake, there are Orthodox Jews who oppose actions of the State of Israel, and a fringe group that rejects the existence of the State itself! Yet non-Arab Muslims feel it their duty to support "Palestine," an historically false entity. And of course, it's unacceptable for world Jewry to support Israel.

The only people who should be protesting are Israeli, and anyone who hates injustice.

I live twenty minutes away by bus from the site about which they are talking.