...There are two parallel battles: One for the Temple Mount, which the Muslims are winning, and one for the city as a whole, where Israel has the upper hand.
On the mount, the Muslims have been expanding their religious space, and since 1996 have built two new mosques. At the same time, they deny any Jewish religious or national entitlement.
...Nevertheless, some Israeli experts claim that Israel already has lost the battle for the mount by surrendering religious control to the Muslims, failing to impose Israeli law on their building violations and abiding by a rabbinic ruling forbidding Jews from praying there precisely because of the awesome holiness of the place to Judaism. All this creates a lack of Jewish presence on the mount, which the Muslims have exploited to the full.
Shmuel Berkovits, a member of the Committee for Preventing the Destruction of Antiquities on Temple Mount, says the Muslims aim ultimately to turn the mount into something akin to the Kaaba in Mecca, an exclusively Muslim holy area from which non-Muslims are barred.
Muslim control of the mount has not stopped agitators such as Sheik Raad Salah, head of the northern wing of the Israeli Arab Islamic movement, from trying to use trumped-up claims about a Jewish threat to Al-Aksa to mobilize the Arab world against Israel and thereby torpedo any emerging peace deal. Muslim control of the mount also has prompted Israeli right-wingers to build around the Old City in order to neutralize the Muslim advantage on the mount, drawing yet more fire from the Arab side.
The end result is an extremely volatile situation that Israeli security experts say could easily trigger a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
And what did I say, in 2000?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment