OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 29 July — Israel and the Palestinians were bracing for a potentially bloody showdown today over one of the world’s holiest sites, where a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set off the Palestinian uprising 10 months ago. The Arab League, several Arab governments and Muslim groups have warned of the potential tinderbox effect of plans by a group of Israeli rabbis to lay a first stone for a new temple on the mosque compound in Jerusalem.
The tiny 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. But the court denied the group permission to lay the stone at the site itself, Al-Haram Al-Sharif.
The Israeli government said yesterday it would prevent the fringe right-wing Jewish group from inflaming Muslim sensitivities by ensuring it did not place a new cornerstone at the holy site. Jerusalem police said in late evening they had stopped tens of extremists from breaching security barriers in a bid to gain access to the Al-Haram Al-Sharif.
The Palestinian Authority warned of the repercussions of the court ruling, calling on Palestinians to demonstrate in large numbers to “defend the mosque compound.”
Other Arab and Palestinian leaders warned that the ceremony 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 news conference. “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. Ahmed Maher, the foreign minister of Egypt — one of just two Arab countries, along with Jordan, to have signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state — warned of a worsening conflict in the Middle East, and he called on the Israeli government to prevent it. Maher called it “a provocation which adds to numerous earlier Israeli provocations contrary to international legality.”
Hamas called on Palestinians to mobilize today 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.
Tensions remained high elsewhere as Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a building near the Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early yesterday.
