Some excerpts:
The capture of would-be suicide bomber Said Qawasmeh in the Al-Aqsa Mosque came as no surprise to officials of the Israel Security Agency, otherwise known as the Shin Bet. They had captured terrorists inside the Temple Mount compound before. However, the fragile political situation gives rise to suspicions that terror attacks by Hamas in the Jerusalem region and in Judea and Samaria, which had subsided a little over the past several years, will resume at full strength with support from Hamas in Gaza and the organization’s headquarters in Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
...one long-time detective guessed that Qawasme was hiding inside a mosque, perhaps even the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. He based his guess on past experience: Over the years, there had been several incidents in which mosques in general, and the mosques on the Temple Mount in particular, have served as hideouts in which terrorists who had perpetrated attacks, or were about to carry them out, met, organized or hid.
The last connection to the Temple Mount that the detective remembered had to do with two terrorists who had allegedly planned to fire a rocket at Teddy Stadium during a Betar Jerusalem game. (One of them has since been tried and convicted, and the other’s trial is still in progress.}
According to the Shin Bet, the two men served as Hamas’ representatives on the Temple Mount and were employed there at high salaries for three years. In Qawasmeh’s case, the shot in the dark proved accurate. He was indeed hiding on the Temple Mount and even stayed there overnight. He was captured the next morning near the Al-Aqsa Mosque thanks to intelligence that came from the Temple Mount.
...Moussa Hamada, of the village of Zur Baher in east Jerusalem, whose trial is still in progress (and who denies the charges against him). According to the state, Hamada, who was employed over the past three years as Hamas’ representative on the Temple Mount, met a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an engineer named Bassem, in Mecca about two years ago, and received a coded telephone number from him so that he would be able to contact him in the future. Later, the engineer gave Hamada money intended for the purchase of a gun as part of his Hamas activity. Hamada and his friend Bassem el-Umri are on trial for a series of security offenses, including plans to fire a rocket at Teddy Stadium.
...After the prisons and the universities, the Temple Mount appears to be a well-proven focal point that draws terrorists to itself. Hamas is constantly trying to entrench its status in the mosque. Magad Jouaba, who was sentenced to two years in prison for his membership and activity in a terrorist organization, worked for Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Committee to strengthen Hamas’ hold on the Temple Mount. Jouaba was the man who made sure that the salaries of Moussa Hamada and Bassem el-Umri, who worked for Hamas in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, would be paid. In his plea-bargain deal, Jouaba confessed that he was responsible for the activity of a Hamas cell that worked for the Al-Aqsa Committees on the Temple Mount. Husam Aldin Alian, a Hamas operative who is serving a 14-month sentence, worked in the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a representative of Hamas and of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Today it can be told that terrorist cells used the mosques on the Temple Mount in the slightly more distant past as well. For example, that is what one cell did when it threw grenades at new recruits in the Givati Brigade who had completed their swearing-in ceremony near the Western Wall in 1986, and the cell that kidnapped and murdered Border Police soldier Nissim Toledano in December 1992 and traffic police officers Daniel Hazut and Mordechai Yisrael in March 1993 behaved similarly.
And to think, it's a Muslim holy site.
Is that, also, holy terror?
And in the meantime, Emily Amrusy ascended to the Temple Mount:
We waited 2,000 years, and more ...
On the day the Palestinians began to celebrate their announcement of statehood, hours before the opening U.N. session, I took my eldest son up to the Temple Mount. The area of the mount is disputed, and for the first time, I am entering the inner-most circle.
...what is Zionism, if not Zion? And what is Zion, if not the Temple Mount? Before the country's borders, before the West Bank, and before Jerusalem, forever and ever, our right to this land is derived from a single rock. A rock of contention, a rock of our existence - you must visit it sometime. Very few Israelis visit it. Even fewer religious Israelis.
We are excited when we visit Rachel's Tomb, celebrate at Meron, fight for our right to the Cave of the Patriarchs; but the Temple Mount is reserved for psychos....
...I consider myself to be a rational person, but when someone pointed out the location of the Holy of Holies [the inner chamber of the ancient temple, which housed the Ark of the Covenant], I immediately felt the need to kneel on the ground. In three weeks, if we were prepared for it, the High Priest would enter that chamber on the Day of Atonement and our sins would be forgiven. But we are not yet ready for that, we are not prepared, and instead, Japanese tourists are inside the Holy of Holies, clicking away with their cameras.
I went up to the Jewish people's most sacred place, the foundation of the world, where Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac, the place from where the Divine Spirit departed, and I felt a need to offer a double blessing...
Near the X-ray scanner, I was asked if I had a siddur (Jewish prayer book) in my bag. The tour of the mount was accompanied by stern-looking police officers and representatives of the Waqf (an Islamic body with authority over the Temple Mount). When someone raised their hands in the air, the officials jumped on her. When someone moved her lips in silent prayer, the officials threatened to remove her from the grounds. I bent down to photograph my son, and when I straightened up again I realized I had defeated the officials by kneeling at the holy site.
The Waqf has removed every sign of ancient Jewish presence at the site. At the entrance, a Waqf sign says "The Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard and everything in it is Islamic property." The Al-Aqsa Mosque was built on the ruins of historical temple gates.
...So close, yet so far. Opposite the temple, at a spot close to the Foundation Stone, where one is permitted to stand according to Jewish law, I hear the prophet Haggai shouting "So is now the time for you to be living in your own paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?" I take a step back, and, with my lips closed, whisper the prayers of all Jewish generations, under the watchful eye of the Waqf official.
Congratulations to Emily.
And congratulations to the GSS in the arrest of yet another terrorist.
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