generalspeaking

Ratcheting Up The Protests

"It's a group of extreme right-wingers who are really playing with fire. It's not only about the Palestinian community or even not the Arab states -- this is about the Muslim world, and those provocateurs don't seem to care at all."
Gideon Levy, Haaretz columnist

That's the voice of a cowed and frightened Jew who would, like the Government of Israel itself, prefer to leave matters as they are; that Jews be forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount, and their appearances there be few and infrequent, leaving their most sacred Judaic shrine to the past calling to the present in vain. Jews number some fifteen million world-wide. Muslims, on the other hand, have their numbers throughout the ummah soaring past 1.2-billion.



There is influence in greater numbers pressing the case for Islamic sovereignty over a sacred Judaic place of worship where Islam also lays claim to worshipping their divine spirit, after Mecca and Medina, their most sacred religious sites. Medina was once, in antiquity a place of Jews, until the Prophet Mohammad gave them the opportunity to convert to Islam, or to die by the sword. And they died.

MEDINA (Ar. Madīna; ancient name, Yathrib), city in fertile valley of the *Hejaz in northern *Arabia. Along with *Tayma and *Khaybar, Medina was a leading Jewish community in ancient Arabia. Prior to the expulsion of most of Medina Jewry by *Muhammad (620s) the oasis was largely inhabited by Jews. According to legend, the Jewish community dates from Moses' war against the Amalekites, the Babylonian Exile (c. 586 B.C.E.), Antiochus IV'S persecutions, and the defeat by Rome (70 C.E.). In any case, by the early centuries of the Christian era the population of Medina consisted mostly of Jewish tribes (according to some Arabs, up to 20 tribes), either of Judean-Palestinian, mixed Judeo-Arabic, or Arab proselyte origin. Remains of their life survive, including castles, courtyards, and wells, the first of which were dug by the *Naḍīr tribe who inhabited the best lands and cultivated date palms west of the city. The two other major tribes were the *Qurayẓa, who occupied an area in the southeastern part of the town, and the *Qaynuqāʿ, who were among the earliest settlers and resided in the central market.

Jews, needless to say, are persona non grata in Medina, nor are they welcome to visit Mecca, let alone trespass in any Arab country where for thousands of years they lived as historical and more currently, residents of those countries. Oriental Jews now live in Israel, the state which welcomed and absorbed them when they were sent packing from Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Now, the state of Israel, in defending itself from the collective armies of the Middle East, has had its ancient capital of Jerusalem restored to it.

Where the two temples of Solomon, each destroyed in turn by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and the second by the Romans in 70 CE, were built over by Islam as Muslims defended a city (from the Crusades) they came to regard as sacred with the advent of Islam seven hundred years later. But though Jews were finally reconciled with their sacred past and had access to east Jerusalem restored when Jordan was defeated in its attack against Israel, Muslims must still be placated.



A rising resentment and a movement among Jews to be enabled to pray at the Temple Mount has alarmed Muslims who prefer to view access to what they themselves call The Noble Sanctuary in memory of the Prophet Mohammad having ascended to heaven mounted on a horse, from the site, to be their right alone, none others. The absurdity of a nation within whose geography lies its most sacred site not being able to access it to give prayer upon it, evidently needs no other explanation beyond that the challenge is Islam.

Jordan, which under a peace agreement with Israel has been gifted with oversight over the Al Aqsa Mosque, bristles with indignation, reflected all over the Arab and Muslim world at the very thought of a Jewish presence sullying an Islamic site, threatening that Israel, which is responsible for security at the site, endangers the peace agreement. It does so by struggling to maintain order in the face of Palestinians lobbing rocks and incendiary devices at Jews on the site, at Israeli police, who must then declare the site to be temporarily closed off to visitors until calm is restored.

A Palestinian protester holds a Hamas flag during clashes with Israeli troops following a protest against what organizers say are recent visits by Jewish activists to al-Aqsa mosque, at Qalandia checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah November 7, 2014 (Reuters / Ammar Awad)

When the site was re-opened and access denied any Muslim worshippers under the age of 30 in the hopes that the violence would subside, Palestinians took to hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails at police from within the mosque, determined to prevent Jewish visitors and tourists from entering the compound. Exclusive, the Palestinians demand, to Islam. When Jordan, unauthorized before the 1967 war with Israel administered the site, no Jews were permitted entry under any circumstances.

With the Palestinian Authority insisting that east Jerusalem be agreed upon in any potential peace agreement with Israel as the capital of a new Palestinian state, access to Jewish holy sites would be forbidden. In the past, the Authority and the administering Qutb have conspired to destroy any evidence of Jewish heritage. Those many sites elsewhere sacred to Jews as historical religious areas of significance are also desecrated regularly by Arabs, while should a rumour circulate that a Koran has been defaced, the Islamic world erupts in a firestorm of violence.

The President of the Palestinian Authority feels free to inspire his people to prevent, at any costs, by any means, as their sacred right the Jewish state and Jews from ascending the Temple Mount in its guise for Muslims as the Holy Sanctuary. The result has been an escalation from rock-throwing to vehicular homicide, otherwise known as terrorism. The terrorist group Hamas incites Palestinians to violence, praising their efforts in a newly combined PA pact of unity with Fatah.

And as is usual between Arabs with their tribal, religious and ethnic antipathies, Hamas attacks and destroys the homes of Fatah leaders to remind Fatah who has the real strength between the two; the  group that simply murmurs its intent to destroy the State of Israel, or the one that celebrates it loudly and through more direct and catastrophic violence levelled against the state and its population which includes Arabs, Kurds, Christians and Baha'i in a pluralistic society of freedoms and equality.

Labels: Conflict, Heritage, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Palestinian Authority

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 08, 2014