Described as ‘the most contested piece of real estate on earth’, Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, known as Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) to Muslims and Temple Mount to Jews, is today the epicenter of Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

Many aspects of the site’s history, religious significance, and socio-political status long precede Israel’s inception and are closely entwined with the overall historical status quo of the Old City of Jerusalem itself.

In 1917, having defeated the Ottoman Empire, the British army seized control of Jerusalem. Upon arrival at the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, General Allenby dismounted his horse and entered on foot in what was then understood as a show of respect to the ancient site. It signaled that the British authorities intended to maintain the status quo upheld by the Ottomans in the city for four hundred years.

Under the Ottoman Turks, Jerusalem’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews in their separate quarters coexisted in relative harmony, with edicts granting the various religious groups shared rights in the holy places, demarcating areas of control and establishing time schedules in areas shared by more than one religion. This came to be known as the ‘status quo’.

“Key to the success of this arrangement was the lack of a single sovereign entity or a power hierarchy prioritizing one group’s religious needs over others, and this is precisely what would gradually change in the coming decades”

The status quo acquired additional legitimacy by being included in the 1856 Paris Peace Convention Treaty, the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty, and the British Mandate government’s 1922 Palestine Order-in-Councils.

Key to the success of this arrangement was the lack of a single sovereign entity or a power hierarchy prioritizing one group’s religious needs over others, and this is precisely what would gradually change in the coming decades.

Facilitated by the British authorities in the 1920s and 1930s, Jerusalem saw an influx of European Jewish settlers, which aroused fear in the local Palestinians of a Jewish takeover of the Holy City. Clashes and riots between Palestinians and Jewish settlers were inevitable.

In 1947 the UN adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, which set to divide the country into Arab and Jewish states. It assigned an international status (corpus separatum) to Jerusalem with the intention to retain the city’s status quo.

In 1948, Israel was established and Palestinians were dispossessed and displaced. This saw the Israeli state seize the western part of Jerusalem. The Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement of 1949 formalised the de facto division of the city into an eastern sector, including Haram Al-Sharif, controlled by Jordan, and a western sector controlled by Israel.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in June 1967, and within days it demolished the 800-year-old Arab Muslim quarter of Al-Maghraba (Moroccan quarter) and expelled its residents to provide increased access for Jews to the Western Wall. Although Muslims still claim the land as waqf (Islamic religious property), the area now is a hub for religious and ultra-nationalist Jews.

The adjacent Haram Al-Sharif was initially spared direct Israeli control, fearing such a step would ignite the region and bring about sharp international criticism. The Israeli occupation allowed the Islamic waqf, mainly supervised and funded by the Jordanian government, to continue to administer the Muslim site.

This, in theory, is what stands today. But the events on the ground suggest that Israel’s alleged commitment to the Muslim site’s status quo has been dangerously eroded.

The incremental takeover of Al-Aqsa

The 35-acre compound of Haram al-Sharif has been under Muslim rule for nearly 14 centuries and houses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.

For Jews, the same area is believed to be the site of the destroyed First and Second Temples (586 BC and 70 CE respectively). However, independent scientific verification is scarce, as Jewish claims are solely biblical and no significant archaeological remains have been found to support them.

Soon after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it claimed it had no wish to change the situation in the Old City. The country’s Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis issued a Halachic decree forbidding the entry of Jews into the Al-Aqsa compound on the grounds it was deemed a violation of Jewish religious law.

The decree was approved by even fundamentalist Rabbi Zvi Yehud Kook, a key leader of religious Zionism whose followers represent the core of religious settlers in the occupied West Bank today.

“Over the next decades, it would become clear that the initial religious decree to ban Jewish entrance into Haram Al-Sharif and Israeli governments’ commitment to the legal status quo were not upheld”
For Palestinians, the signs were ominous from day one. Demolishing the Moroccan quarter soon after the occupation was, effectively, an encroachment upon the status quo. This was immediately followed by the Israeli Border Police taking control of a building near the Compound’s northern wall, turning it into a permanent Israeli police headquarters. Protecting Haram Al-Sharif from Jewish violations was the pretext.

Yet, in 1969 a fundamentalist Australian Jew, Denis Michael Rohan, managed to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque and started a fire in the building. With mostly buckets of water, Palestinian Muslims and Christians rushed to put out the fire, only to be obstructed by the Israeli authorities, leaving the fire to rage for hours. The ancient mosque suffered significant damage.

Over the next decades, it would become clear that the initial religious decree to ban Jewish entrance into Haram Al-Sharif and Israeli governments’ commitment to the legal status quo were not upheld. This would be confirmed by Israel’s 1980 unilateral and illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.

The annexation provided the Israeli authorities with the legal tools to gradually create facts on the ground in the compound with the hope of diminishing the Jordanian custodianship over the site, weakening Palestinians’ attachment to it and eventually establishing a permanent Jewish presence there.

Dismantling the Dome of the Rock and building the temple on its ruins continues to be the goal of some Jewish far-right groups. Between 1967 and 2000, dozens of Israeli incursions by religious Jewish fanatics occurred, trying to lay the so-called Temple cornerstone at Al-Aqsa. Several excavations were also carried out under the compound.

Each time, Palestinians protesting these incursions were met with violence by Israeli police.

In April 1982, the Israeli security opened fire within the Dome of the Rock, killing and injuring six Palestinians and causing physical damage to the building. A raid inside the Compound in October 1990 led to the death of nineteen Palestinians. In 1996, widespread protests erupted following Israel’s opening of a tunnel under Al-Aqsa. Over 100 Palestinians were killed and a thousand others injured by Israeli forces.

“Marking the so-called ‘Jerusalem Day’ this year, Haram Al-Sharif saw a record number of settler incursions under unprecedentedly heavy police protection”
Staring into the abyss

The watershed moment came in 2000 with former PM Ariel Sharon’s ‘visit’ to Haram Al-Sharif, surrounded by over a thousand security personnel. The visit, which ignited the Second Intifada, opened the door to more intensive and organized incursions into the compound.

On security grounds allegedly in response to the Intifada, Israel revoked the waqf’s administration of visits by non-Muslims.

Before 2003, the Israeli government allowed a maximum of three religious Jews to visit the site at the same time. From 2017 onwards, the incursions became a daily routine, normally carried out between 7.30am and 10.30am, and again between 1pm and 2pm under police protection. Dozens of settlers join each tour, with the number rising to hundreds on Jewish holidays, such as Passover, Purim, and Jerusalem Day.

In 2009, the number of settlers raiding Haram Al-Sharif reached 5,000. It rose to 15,000 in 2016, then 25,000 in 2017, and 30,000 in 2019. In the first three months of this year, the raids saw a 35% surge compared to the year prior.

Marking the so-called ‘Jerusalem Day’ this year, Haram Al-Sharif saw a record number of settler incursions under unprecedentedly heavy police protection. Some 2,600 Jews stormed the Muslim holy site.

Simultaneously, Palestinians were banned from entering the compound and were met not only by police brutality but also by settler violence at Al-Aqsa gates and across the Old City, including the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

Imam and Director of Al-Aqsa, Sheikh Omar Kiswani, said that the Jerusalem Day incursions this year were the most dangerous since Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and that the Israeli authorities have been planning to move the battle to the inside of Haram Al-Sharif. “In so doing, the occupation aims to ignite a religious war,” Kiswani warned.

Similarly, Jerusalem’s PA-appointed governor, Adnan Gheith, told Al Jazeera Arabic that the final goal of the Bennett government is starting a regional religious war.

In a fiery speech last month commemorating the Gaza war’s first anniversary, Hamas leader Yehiyah Sinwar warned that Al-Aqsa Mosque is a red line and that what happened during Ramadan, when the Israeli troops stormed the mosque and attacked the worshippers, could be a prelude for a widespread religious war.

Pointing at a large poster behind him showing Israeli troops inside the mosque in full gear, Sinwar threatened that, “The Sword of Jerusalem (a reference to the Gaza battle) remains unsheathed, and [the resistance] will never allow [the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque] to happen again”.

Palestinians believe that reframing their anti-colonial struggle in religious terms would ultimately play into Israel’s hands. Israel actively promotes the idea that Jews, represented by Israel, and Christians, represented by ‘the West’, are in a global struggle against ‘radical Islam’. A religious war can be endless, and that suits Israel perfectly.

Meanwhile, a political struggle has an end, and this framing is at odds with Israel’s final goal of a complete takeover of Palestinian land. What is more, in a religious war, the illegality of the occupation and international law becomes irrelevant.

“All evidence suggests that what is coming is further escalation, and more intensive campaigns to change the status quo at Haram al-Sharif, for without the compound, Israel’s ‘sovereignty’ over East Jerusalem remains incomplete”
To protect Haram Al-Sharif, Palestinians have, among other things, organized what is known as Murabiteen, a social and religious sit-in where worshippers form a permanent presence in the mosque to prevent the settlers from taking over.

The Murabiteen, however, have been routinely targeted by the Israeli authorities, either through physical abuse, arrest, or temporary banishment from the Compound.

With the dramatic increase in the number of raids on the Compound and police brutality, this time directly supported and facilitated by Israel’s far-right government, protecting the Muslim holy site has become extremely challenging.

To Palestinian-Israeli Knesset member (MK) Sami Abu Shihadeh, what is happening in Jerusalem reflects a fast and dangerous deterioration of the majority of the Jewish population toward fascism.

Celebrating the occupation of another people, a reference to the Jerusalem Day’s flag parade, is a sure sign of a society-wide moral decline, MK Ahmed Tibi commented. Whether there is indeed a decline toward fascism remains a subject of debate; what is certain is that Israeli society has been marching steadily towards the far-right.

All evidence suggests that what is coming is further escalation, and more intensive campaigns to change the status quo at Haram al-Sharif, for without the compound, Israel’s ‘sovereignty’ over East Jerusalem remains incomplete.

Only further violence, more Palestinian dispossession, and the increased intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be the result.

Dr Emad Moussa is a researcher and writer who specializes in the politics and political psychology of Palestine/Israel.

Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa

Source: https://english.alaraby.co.uk/analysis/why-al-aqsa-epicentre-israels-occupation

The post Why Al-Aqsa is the epicentre of Israeli-Palestinian tensions first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

JERUSALEM — A Palestinian carried out a stabbing and shooting attack in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, killing an Israeli soldier and a civilian, and ratcheting up tensions ahead of Israeli elections.

The attack came amid a heated campaign for the April 9 ballot in which a former general leading a new, centrist party is challenging the longtime incumbent, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over who can provide Israelis with better security.

The situation was already volatile.

On Friday, a fragile calm was restored after two rockets from Gaza were fired at Tel Aviv on the night before, without causing harm.

Israel retaliated swiftly, with strikes at what it said were military sites and compounds belonging to Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza. The Israeli military said one of the sites it struck in Gaza was the headquarters for coordinating Hamas activities in the West Bank, where the group has been seeking to foment violence.

The soldier killed on Sunday was identified as Staff Sgt. Gal Keidan, 19. On Monday, a second victim, Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, 47, a father of 12 from the settlement of Eli and head of a seminary in Tel Aviv, died of his wounds. Another soldier was seriously wounded. As of Monday morning, the assailant was still at large.

Hamas praised the attack as a “courageous and daring operation,” without claiming responsibility for it. In a statement, it described the West Bank as a “strategic” place where it was possible to surprise Israel with violent attacks.

The assault began when a Palestinian man stabbed Sergeant Keidan near the settlement of Ariel in the central West Bank, then stole the soldier’s weapon and took off in a car, according to the Israeli military. He then fired at people at a bus stop before fleeing the scene.

In remarks at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu said the security forces were pursuing those responsible for the attack at two points in the central West Bank. “I am certain that they will apprehend them,” he said, “and we will deal with them to the fullest extent of the law, as we have done in all of the recent incidents.”

In December, two Israeli soldiers were killed by a Palestinian gunman near Ramallah, days after another attacker wounded a pregnant woman; her baby died. Another Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis at a West Bank factory.

Israeli security forces surround a car near the spot in the West Bank where an assailant stabbed a soldier to death and wounded two other Israelis.CreditJack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Even before the victim of Sunday’s attack had been named, the incident became grist for the increasingly rough election campaign. In search of support and facing corruption charges, a weakened Mr. Netanyahu is pulling out all the stops, including making a deal last month with a racist anti-Arab party.

On Sunday, Israel’s High Court of Justice disqualified one of the candidates from that party, Michael Ben Ari, from running in the election. The judges acted after being presented with video evidence of Mr. Ben Ari’s incitement against Palestinians, including those who are citizens of Israel.

Miri Regev, the minister of culture and sport from Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party, said the attack Sunday was the direct result of incitement by Palestinians; criticized an Arab lawmaker in Israel’s Parliament for refusing to condemn terrorist attacks; and accused the new party, led by Benny Gantz, a former military chief, of wanting to form a parliamentary majority with the Arab lawmaker.

“This is the weak left, and this is the left that will bring us a continuation of terror attacks like these,” Ms. Regev said.

Mr. Gantz’s Blue and White Party dismissed the criticism. “Never in the history of the state has it happened that a minister in Israel has exploited the deaths of those killed in terror attacks for political propaganda even before the funerals of the dead,” it said on twitter. “For the honor of the victims we will not respond at this time.”

Hamas has found itself under increasing pressure because of a crippling economic crisis in Gaza. The group has harshly suppressed street demonstrations in recent days, beating and arresting civilians who have burned tires and blocked roads in protest against the daily hardships of life in the Palestinian coastal territory.

The post West Bank Attack Raises Tensions as Israeli Elections Approach first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Jews and Muslims clashed Sunday morning on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, with police detaining Jewish visitors who had raised an Israeli flag at the outset of what is set to be one of the most politically sensitive and volatile weeks this year.

According to eyewitnesses, a group of Jewish visitors began singing after they entered the site — holy to both Jews and Muslims — on Jerusalem Day, the anniversary of the day when Israeli forces took control of the Old City and Arab-majority East Jerusalem in 1967.

Muslims at the site — known to them as Haram al-Sharif or the Noble Sanctuary — chanted “Allahu Akbar” at the Jews, with police forces separating both groups.

A video showed young Israelis, dressed in blue and white festive clothes, raising an Israeli flag and immediately being confronted by police officers. Another video showed visitors prostrating themselves on the ground in contravention of regulations barring Jewish prayer at the site.

One of the youths was the son of the ultranationalist lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich of the Jewish Home party, who praised his son for his “bravery and national respect.”

“There will come a day, my son, when the Israeli flag will be raised proudly on the Temple Mount, in the Temple,” Smotrich tweeted.

Footage from the scene showed the officers removing members of the Jewish group from the site.

A police spokesperson said that “a number of visitors were removed from area after not keeping to the guidelines of behavior during the visit,” adding that officers were “questioning the individuals who were removed from the Temple Mount.”

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest site in Islam. High-profile visits by Israeli officials and rumors of changes to the status quo have preceded outbursts of violence. Under an arrangement in place since Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, non-Muslims are allowed to visit the site but not pray there.

Jews are allowed to enter during limited hours, with police officers guiding them through a predetermined route and forbidding them from praying, displaying religious symbols or raising the Israeli flag.

Security in Jerusalem has been bolstered ahead of a politically tense week that will see Israel celebrate 51 years of the city’s reunification on Sunday, the US move its embassy to the capital on Monday, and the culmination of over six weeks of protests along the Gaza border, when Palestinians mourn the “catastrophe” of the creation of the Jewish state.

A new road sign indicating the way to the new US embassy in Jerusalem is seen on May 7, 2018. (AFP Photo/Thomas Coex)

Later on Sunday, thousands of Israelis are expected to take part in the annual Jerusalem Day parade celebrating 51 years since the reunification of the city during the 1967 Six Day War.

The march, in which primarily religious teenagers march through the Old City decked in white and blue, the colors of the Israeli flag, has raised tensions over its route through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. In previous years, the march has sparked sporadic incidents of violence between Israeli revelers and local Palestinian residents.

This year, as in years past, the left-wing NGO Ir Amim sent a letter to authorities requesting that they reroute the march so that it doesn’t go through the Muslim Quarter.

Amid fears that the demonstration could inflame tensions with local Arab residents, a police official told the Ynet news site on Friday that officers would show “zero tolerance for verbal abuse or physical violence” during the event.

He urged revelers to be mindful of the political sensitivities of the march, and to “maintain law and order.”

Israelis wave the Israeli flag as they parade through Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City on May 24, 2017 to commemorate Jerusalem Day, marking the reunification of the city following the Six-Day War of 1967. (AFP PHOTO / Menahem KAHANA)

Thousands of uniformed police and Border Police officers were deployed throughout Jerusalem on Sunday. The officers will secure the perimeter of the US embassy during Monday’s opening, assist in securing the visiting American officials and help direct traffic.

On Sunday, major roads in the city will be blocked between 3 p.m. and 11 p.m. due to Jerusalem Day events. They will include Bar Lev Boulevard and Sultan Suleiman Street around the Old City; Jaffa, Hillel, Bezalel and King George streets near the city center; and Ben Zvi Boulevard, which leads to the city’s main entrance.

Israel is also girding for possible violence during Nakba Day protests, a national day of Palestinian mourning marking the “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding, commemorated every year on May 15. Due to the beginning of the month of Ramadan, protests have been moved up to Monday.

Last week, Hamas’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar said he hoped that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would breach the border fence from Gaza into Israel during the protests.

In recent Fridays, Palestinian protesters have burned tires along the fence, hurled stones at Israeli troops and flown incendiary kites over dry fields on the Israeli side of the border. Some of the protesters, mainly youths, brandished wire cutters, a popular tool in weekly attempts to cut through the border fence.

According to the Hamas health ministry, 48 Palestinians have been killed since protests and clashes began along the Gaza border on March 30 and hundreds of others have been wounded from gunfire. Israel says it only opens fire when necessary to stop infiltrations, damage to the fence, and attacks.

Israel has repeatedly expressed concern over the possibility of a mass breach of the Gaza fence, in which Palestinians would stream across with terrorists among them, wreaking havoc. Sinwar has vowed in the past that protesters would “breach the borders and pray at Al-Aqsa” mosque on the Temple Mount.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-boot-jews-from-temple-mount-for-raising-israel-flag-on-volatile-day/

The post Police boot Jews from Temple Mount for raising Israel flag on volatile day first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.