Friday, October 12, 2007
One of many reasons Israel should never cede control of East Jerusalem: Islamic Imperialism. Abbas aide: Western Wall is ours
An adviser to Mahmoud Abbas said the Kotel should be under Palestinian control.
Adnan Husseini, aide to the Palestinian Authority president, said Thursday that Palestinian demands for Israel to cede eastern Jerusalem under any peace accord also includes the Western Wall.
"This is part of Islamic heritage that cannot be given up, and it must be under Muslim control," Husseini told Israel's NRG Web site, adding that all of Jerusalem's Old City should be part of a future Palestinian state. He made similar comments in an interview with Israel Radio...
...Abbas had no immediate comment on Husseini's statements, which appeared to contradict several past land-for-peace proposals that had won international consensus and called for Israel to retain control of the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City...
They're doing this on purpose. Clearly, the Pals do not want a settlement; they want to create a situation where the peace talks must inevitably fail so they can blame Israeli "intransigence" for the lack of any agreement and create a seemingly plausible reason to go back to shooting people. This is a tired old game and it's astonishing that they think they can still get away with it. Unfortunately, the "international community" has proven to be so gullible and feckless that the Pals have good reason to think that it will work.
They know that no Israeli government can possibly accept such a demand. That is precisely why they make it. At this point, I cannot believe that anyone with any sense can believe that the Pals actually want peace with Israel.
"Peace" without Israel, yes. But peace with Israel? Obviously not.
Ephraim:
The reason the Palestinians think they can get away with this... is that they can, and they have, and they will.
They have always gotten away with it in the past because Western powers -- sometimes the United States, often Europe, always the United Nations -- are willing to listen to them, and to swallow their claims whole.
There is no basis whatsoever for any Palestinian claim to the Western Wall -- unless they want to claim that cheap Palestinian labor helped build Herod's Temple Mount, or that it was Palestinian moneylenders that Jesus kicked out, or something.
But they'll go on saying it, just as Arafat insisted for years that there was a map in the Knesset showing Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates (nonsense), or that the Israeli 10-agora coin showed the outline of a similar map (nonsense).
Sometimes the nonsense doesn't stick, e.g. the heated claims that Israeli prostitutes were giving AIDS to Palestinian men. But so what? They're never held to account for their nonsense, so they have no reason not to keep trying until something DOES stick.
And once again, Israel will try desperately to protect her own... while playing on ground of the enemy's choosing. It's depressing to watch.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
"During a summit on “Islamophobia†organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Arab League of Cordoba in Spain, the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, demanded Muslims be granted the right to hold religious services at the Cathedral of Cordoba.
The first day of the summit quickly became controversial when Moussa demanded that the Cathedral, which was once a Mosque, be made available for Muslim prayer.
“All churches and mosques are built for prayer and to be used for this end; I think there wouldn’t be a religious clash at all; the clash would be instead of a political nature,†Moussa said. However, he ignored questions pertaining to why Christians are not only forbidden to pray in mosques but are even prohibited from building churches in some Muslim countries...
“The seventeen centuries of Cordoba’s Christian history deserve to be respected,†Bishop Asenjo said at that time. Recent work by archeologists has shown that the Cathedral’s sub-floor dates to the 4th and 6th centuries. The Cathedral was completely destroyed after the Muslim invasion of 711.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/10753
Someone should suggest to Amr Moussa that the Dome of the Rock be made open to Jews and Christians to worship and see what he says.
IIRC, the Muslims call the Kotel "al Buraq". Their "claim" to the Kotel is based on the tradition that when Muhammad rode from Mecca to Jerusalem on his winged horse Buraq (his "night journey"), he supposedly tethered the horse at the Kotel before he was lifted bodily up to Heaven.
It should be obvious to everyone that the Muslim claim is superior. After all, all the Jews did was build the Kotel for the Temple Mount where their Temple was located. But Muhammad did a fly-by on his magic flying horse (who had the tail of a peacock to boot)!
I mean, who can argue with a claim like that?
It's a jihadist logic. Don't look for rationality there.
Question: If the Western Wall is of such significance for the Muslims, how come the site was a garbage dump during the years that Jews were barred from going there, 1947-1967?