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Temple Mount and the Ultimate Nightmare
Holy site could be
new flash point
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Israel said Wednesday it would severely limit the
access of Muslim worshippers to Jerusalem's holiest site during
the holy month of Ramadan, claiming it could collapse.
Angry Muslim clerics dismissed Israel’s claims, saying Arab
engineers assured them the Al Aqsa Mosque compound was stable.
They accused Israel of exaggerating the danger in hopes of
increasing its control over the site, which is administered by
the Islamic Trust.
Israeli police and archaeologists warned that because of a
recent earthquake, part of the compound, Islam’s third holiest
shrine, might collapse under large crowds of believers during
Ramadan, which begins this weekend.
The sacred hilltop, revered by Jews as the site of their
biblical temples, is one of the most sensitive spots in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and riots there in 2000 escalated
into the current round of fighting. Israeli attempts to restrict
the number of worshippers could lead to more Palestinian
protests.
Israel’s police minister, Gideon Ezra, said he wants the Islamic
Trust, or Waqf, to declare the southeastern corner of the holy
site compound off-limits.
If the Waqf does not agree, “we will view this as a real and
immediate threat and we can’t let this happen ... we will have
to limit the number of worshippers to 50,000 or 60,000,” Ezra
told Israel Army Radio. The compound holds about 250,000 people
and is often filled to capacity during the main Ramadan prayers.
Cleric disputes Israeli claims
The chief Muslim cleric, or mufti, of Jerusalem, said he would
not go along with the Israeli request. Egyptian and Jordanian
engineers who inspected the walls after the earthquake said that
“there is no real danger,” the mufti, Ikrema Sabri, told The
Associated Press.
After nightfall Wednesday, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile
at a group of militants near Beit Lahiya, a town in the northern
part of the Gaza Strip, witnesses said, killing one person.
Hamas officials said he was Hassan Shakfi, 24, a member of the
Islamic group. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Around the same time, an Israeli attack helicopter fired a
missile in the Rafah refugee camp at the other end of the Gaza
Strip, along the Egyptian border, Palestinians said. No one was
hurt. About 20 tanks were seen massing at the edge of the camp.
Hamas chief captured
Earlier Wednesday, Israeli troops captured the Hamas chief in
the West Bank city of Hebron after surrounding his hideout. The
fugitive, Eymad Qawasmeh, was ordered to strip to ensure he was
not armed, and was led away blindfolded and in his underwear.
Bulldozers destroyed the hideout.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz branded Qawasmeh a “mass murderer”
who he said was responsible for a number of suicide bombings.
Qawasmeh is suspected of sending two bombers who killed 16
Israelis in twin bus attacks Aug. 31 in the southern city of
Beersheba.
In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli platoon commander was suspended on
suspicion he emptied an ammunition clip into a 13-year-old
Palestinian girl from close range after she had already
collapsed under army fire.
The officer was not charged in the Oct. 5 incident near the
Rafah refugee camp, but came under investigation after fellow
soldiers said he engaged in an illegal practice known as
“verifying a kill.”
In another incident in Rafah on Wednesday, a 16-year-old
Palestinian boy was killed and his 7-year-old cousin shot in the
stomach by army fire, hospital officials said. The witnesses
said the fire came from army vehicles south of the refugee camp.
The Israeli military said the boys were in a no-go zone.
In the Palestinian refugee camp of Khan Younis, a 5th-grade girl
died Wednesday after being shot in the chest the day before
while sitting at her desk in a U.N.-run school. The army said
soldiers returned mortar fire from the area of the school. The
U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which runs the school, said the
camp was quiet at the time and denied mortars were fired from
its grounds.
Peter Hansen, the UNRWA chief, said that the incident marked the
second time in several weeks that an elementary school girl was
killed while in school.
The toll
“That two young children have been shot and killed, sitting at
their desks in UNRWA schools in the last month, is horrific by
anyone’s standards. Schools should be havens of peace,” he said
in a statement.
In four years of fighting, 3,248 people have been killed on the
Palestinian side, including hundreds of minors. On the Israeli
side, 999 people have been killed, including 98 minors. Many of
the Palestinian youngsters were killed while throwing stones at
soldiers. Others were hit while in their homes, walking to
school or observing clashes.
The Israelis charge that militants operate from populated areas,
endangering civilians.
In northern Gaza, target of a two-week-old Israeli military
offensive, three more Palestinian militants were killed by
Israeli army fire on Wednesday, after tanks moved into the town
of Beit Lahiya.
A days after a cousin of Yasser Arafat escaped assassination
from a car bomb, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said
Palestinian security forces are unable to stop the spreading
chaos in the West Bank and Gaza.
Qureia told The Associated Press the attempt on Gaza security
chief Moussa Arafat’s life
fit into the chaos that has included kidnappings of Palestinians
and foreigners and other assassination attempts.
Annan: Israel admits error
Israel has acknowledged that a U.N. ambulance in Gaza was
carrying a stretcher — not a rocket as it claimed earlier this
month, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Wednesday, at the
United Nations.
Israeli U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman asked Annan to investigate
Peter Hansen, head of the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian
refugees, after the Israeli army released video taken by an
unmanned aircraft flying over the Jebaliya refugee camp in the
northern Gaza Strip.
Israel, which has long accused the U.N. Relief and Works Agency
of bias, said the footage showed militants loading a rocket into
an ambulance with U.N. markings on its roof. The United Nations
immediately denied the accusation and said the footage showed a
worker loading a stretcher into an ambulance.
Palestinian rescue worker Wahel Ghabayen, 38, said he had run
with a stretcher to a school in Jebaliya after he heard that
someone there may have been wounded. But the wounded boy had
already been moved so he returned to the car, folded the
stretcher, “and threw it inside,” he said.
‘A stretcher, not a rocket’
On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it might have been
mistaken when it accused the agency, known as UNRWA, of
transporting a rocket to militants.
But Annan’s associate spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told
reporters on Wednesday that “the Israeli government has
acknowledged that the video of the UNRWA ambulance does in fact
show the driver handling a stretcher and not a rocket.”
Hansen, UNRWA’s commissioner general, told The Associated Press
in Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday that he expected an Israeli
apology. “The Israelis have recognized they made a mistake and
for that they deserve a credit, but they will deserve more
credit if they would stop the campaign with unfounded
accusations and instead issue an apology,” Hansen said.
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