Israel and the Palestinians were bracing for a potentially bloody showdown Sunday over plans by a group of Israeli rabbis to lay a first stone for a new Jewish temple at the Al Aqsa mosque compound in occupied Jerusalem.
The Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement won approval from Israel's Supreme Court Wednesday to lay the symbolic cornerstone at one of the gates of the Old City, near the ruins of what the Jews call the “Second Temple.”
But the court denied the group permission to lay the stone at the site itself, which is also home to the third holiest place in Islam.
"In not permitting us to enter the Temple Mount, the authorities prolong the tragedy of the Jewish people," the group's leader Gershom Salomon said after the court ruling Wednesday, cited by the Israeli press.
According to the Jerusalem Post, police in Jerusalem are bracing for unrest in the area, adding that dozens of supporters of the outlawed Kach terrorist movement attempted to break through police barriers overnight and enter the holy mosque.
The Palestinian Authority warned of the repercussions of Wednesday's court decision giving the symbolic stone-laying the go-ahead, calling on Palestinians to demonstrate in large numbers to "defend the mosque compound."
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met Saturday with representatives of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to discuss the controversial plans to build a third Jewish temple in occupied east Jerusalem, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry source told AFP.
Maher made no comment afterwards, having earlier said that the laying of the first stone is "a provocation which adds to numerous earlier Israeli provocations contrary to international legality."
None of the five diplomats mentioned any specific measures to stop the temple being built.
Arab and Palestinian leaders have warned that the ceremony by Israeli ultra-nationalists could set off a long-feared war in a region wracked by non-stop bloodshed since September.
"Israel has not learned from its own dangerous mistakes," Hanan Ashrawi, the former Palestinian cabinet member and new spokeswoman for the Arab League, told a Jerusalem press conference on Saturday.
"Israel is deliberately throwing the whole region into conflict and we advise them not to take such a dangerous step, because Israel itself might not be able to control the consequences," she said.
The Islamic Hamas movement called on Palestinians to mobilize Sunday and be ready to die to stop the laying of the symbolic stone.
"We call on the Palestinian people and their political groupings to gather very early tomorrow (Sunday) at the Al Aqsa mosque compound to stop the laying of the first stone of the said temple," Hamas said in a statement sent to AFP in Beirut.
With nerves frayed and tempers at fever pitch as 10 months of the Intifada have claimed more than 660 lives, nearly all of them Palestinian, other Arab officials around the region have classed the ceremony as another dangerous step toward all-out war.
The Intifada began after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon paid a provocative visit to the compound which many analysts saw as a bid by the former general to oust then prime minister Ehud Barak, whose peace talks with the Palestinians had fallen apart.
Sharon went on to crush Barak in February elections in the midst of the uprising, with a pledge to take a hardline approach in dealing with the Palestinians.
The unrest on the ground continued Saturday with a Palestinian police officer seriously wounded by Israeli gunfire in the southern West Bank town of Hebron, reported the Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
An Israeli unit which was fired upon from Bani Naim returned fire, an Israeli army spokesman said, although it did not suffer any casualties.
Earlier, the Israeli army bombarded what it called a Palestinian weapons factory in the Gaza Strip early Saturday after a nearby Jewish settlement came under mortar fire.
An Israeli army statement said helicopter gunships hit a building where the Palestinians were manufacturing mortar shells.
But the Palestinians denied it was a bomb factory, saying it is used to process iron, according to Al Jazeera satellite TV channel.
The Israeli army also strengthened its blockade of the Palestinian towns of Nablus and Hebron, in the northern and southern West Bank, Palestine’s public television reported.
The measures were taken following reports that attacks against Israel were being planned from the two autonomous Palestinian towns, the television reported without giving further details.
An Israeli army spokesman questioned by AFP said that access to and from the two towns was only being authorized for humanitarian reasons.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed at least 125 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International report, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
