Arab League asks US and UN to help protect Al Aqsa Mosque 27-07-2004
CAIRO: The Arab League appealed on Monday to the United States and the United Nations to help prevent alleged plots by extremist Jewish groups to attack the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem.
“There are 24 Israeli extremist groups that are planning to attack and destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” said Mohamed Sobeih, Palestinian delegate at the Arab League, during the opening speech of a four-day conference in Cairo.
Sobeih charged that Israel was preparing public opinion for a strike on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, through warnings that extremist groups were plotting to target the mosque.
Israeli media reported on Sunday that authorities fear Jewish extremists could be planning an air attack on Jerusalem’s disputed mosque compound in a bid to derail government plans to uproot settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Citing intelligence reports, Israeli Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said there was a growing threat of a Jewish ultra-nationalist attack on the mosque complex.
As the occupying power, Sobeih stressed that Israel had a responsibility to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He also called on Washington to intervene and help prevent the destruction of the mosque.
Abdul Latif Mamlouk, Lebanon’s representative at the Arab League, urged UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to force Israel to implement the statutes of the Geneva Convention on the protection of territories under occupation.
Known as the Temple Mount by Jews and Al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) to Muslims, the compound housing the Al-Aqsa Mosque also shelters the Dome of the Rock (Omar Mosque) and the Western Wall, the holiest site for Jews.
The conference in Cairo, called to discuss a number of issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, gathered delegates from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile, a Jewish radical leader said on Monday that the Al Aqsa Mosque compound should be removed. “Israel has to return to the Temple Mount and it will. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow but it has to happen. Islam must remove its hands from the Temple Mount and descend from it,” former Jewish underground leader Yehuda Etzion told Reuters amidst a series of Israeli media interviews.
Etzion has been banned from the complex since 1984, when he was arrested and imprisoned for plotting to blow it up, but has continued to call for Jews to reclaim the site of two demolished biblical temples that he sees as part of their birthright.
The Islamic trust that oversees the complex in Jerusalem’s Old City voiced alarm at Etzion’s latest comments. “We are worried,” Adnan al-Husseini, director of the Waqf Trust said. “Plotting against Al Haram Al Sharif is escalating. This subject is at the heart of the beliefs of Muslims all over the world.”
Etzion leads the Temple Mount Loyalists, one of a number of far-right Jewish groups seeking to dismantle the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque to make way for a new “Third Temple”. The mosque complex is guarded by Israeli police, who have lifted a security ban on visits by Israeli Jews and foreigners - but not known Jewish radicals - imposed after a Palestinian revolt began in 2000.
Tawba Astaghfar.
A reminiscence of the destrution of the Babri Mosque by 100,000 Hindus (backed by the Indian authorites) in 1992?
