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Friday, Jan 9, 2009
On the anniversary of the new Palestinian intifada, a resolution between Palestinians and Israelis seems as far away as ever.
Sep 29, 2001 | The stone-paved platform known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, and to Muslims as the al-Aksa mosque or the Noble Sanctuary, sits high above the noise and tension of earthbound Jerusalem. It holds an ancient mosque, a gold-topped shrine and fountains gurgling in the shade of cypress trees.
On most days the peace there is almost celestial.
"But in a moment it can turn into hell," said Isam Awwad, the chief architect in charge of the sacred space.
Hell was unleashed after Ariel Sharon, then a right-wing opposition leader and now Israel's prime minister, visited the site on Sept. 28, 2000, in the company of hundreds of heavily armed policemen. Palestinians seized on the visit to riot. Israeli police killed unarmed protesters the next day after Friday prayers. Pictures of blood spilled on hallowed ground, the site of Islam's third-most sacred shrine, sent Muslims into a frenzy of pain and anti-Israeli hatred. Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel proper as well as thousands around the Muslim world took to the streets to protest the brutality of the police crackdown and the "defilement" of their mosque by Sharon. A new uprising, or intifada, was born.
"Israeli police forces had not learnt the consequences of deaths on al-Aksa, that they reverberate far beyond deaths elsewhere," said Gershom Gorenberg, the Israeli author of "The End of Days," a book on fundamentalists and the struggle for the Temple Mount. "It was the worst possible place to lack nonlethal means of crowd control."
Many Palestinian grievances have fueled the past year's conflict in which more than 800 Palestinians and Israelis, most of them civilians, have been killed: frustration with a peace process that failed to bring Palestinians the dignity and independence they craved; a daily life of humiliation at Israeli-manned checkpoints; and the hope that violence modeled on the actions of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed guerrillas who drove Israeli troops from southern Lebanon last May, would bring Palestinians greater rewards than diplomatic negotiations.
But religion, co-opted for nationalist goals, has also played a decisive role in the Palestinian struggle against Israel, and it is no coincidence that the current conflict has been baptized the "Al-Aksa Intifada."
"They use the Islamic symbols, the Islamic terminology, but the intent is nationalistic," said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political analyst. "Palestinian society is very traditional so it's extremely effective to use religion."
If Sharon's visit to al-Aksa provided the initial spark for the conflict, incendiary sermons delivered from the pulpit of the Jerusalem mosque have kept the fire going. Sheikh Ikrema Sabri, the mufti of Jerusalem, who routinely encourages the faithful to fight, was questioned two weeks ago by Israeli police for calling for the destruction of Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom. (In the same sermon, delivered in August, the sheik allegedly said that the White House, with God's help, would turn black.) Victims of Israeli fire and suicide bombers alike are called "martyrs for al-Aksa." And when Palestinians, exhausted by casualties, economic sanctions and a tight Israeli siege, run out of fighting spirit, the idea of a Zionist threat to al-Aksa reemerges in speeches and editorials to revive flagging spirits.
"Al-Aksa is in danger," one of the intifada's favorite slogans, refers to the belief that Jews are trying to undermine the mosque by digging tunnels that weaken its foundations so that it will eventually topple. According to this theory, Jews will then say the mosque's destruction was an act of God and build a temple in its place. The conspiracy theory, by all accounts ludicrous, is nonetheless a set belief for some, capable of unleashing strong feelings of wounded religious honor and rallying Muslim extremists to the Palestinian cause.
Ironically, many Jews are also convinced that the site they revere as the Temple Mount is under serious threat. Since Palestinians and Israeli police clashed there last fall, the walled compound has been off limits to non-Muslims and shrouded in rumors and paranoia. Israelis insist that "archeological terrorism" is being perpetrated behind closed gates and no amount of technical argument or third-party reassurance seems able to allay those fears.
"This is where we act out our myths," said Gorenberg. "The insane psychodrama of the Middle East is played on the stage of the Temple Mount."
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