After the miserable failure of the security measures implemented unilaterally at the Haram al Sharif by Israeli police and the police minister, including metal detectors and surveillance cameras, which incited a Days of Rage and the killing of five Palestinians in the past two days, Israel is proposing a compromise of sorts. The substance of the compromise is really no compromise at all. According to the proposal, Israel would remove the metal detectors it installed after two police officers were killed by three Palestinian attackers last week. In their place it would install chutes through which all worshippers would pass on their way to the holy site:
Jerusalem city workers, directed by police, would set up fenced-off “sleeves” at the entrances to the Temple Mount. Muslim worshipers would be required to file through these channels. Anyone seen as suspicious, on cameras…installed at the entrances, would be checked with a hand-held metal detector.
It was also possible that Israel would bar worshipers from carrying bags onto the Mount, the TV report said.
Thus, Israel security personnel would spy on the worshippers passing through the chutes. And the Palestinians inside the channels would be like cattle on their way to slaughter. Officers would target any particular individuals they wished to detain and force them to submit to a manual wand search.
While this plan removes some of the more provocative aspects of the original plan, it adds new elements that would be just as objectionable, if not worse. Anyone who has seen the Gaza border crossing at Erez knows about the metal cages in which Palestinians are forced to pass through. As they do, like sardines packed into a tin, they are monitored by anonymous security officials who observe them on video cameras. Similarly, anyone they wish to stop is forced to leave the line and be interrogated individually.
Forcing the thousands of Muslim worshippers to wend their way through metal chutes or cages on their way to the third holiest shrine in Islam is not a recipe for coöperation. Not to mention the manual wand searches of specific individuals, which would be just as objectionable as the original metal detectors.
Further, these new procedures would make it even more onerous for Palestinian Muslims to perform worship at their sacred site. It would add frustrating waits for admission and demeaning treatment by Israeli officials, who would essentially control access to the site, thus violating the status quo.
Beyond all this, the news media reports on this proposal suggest that Israel once again, hasn’t consulted either with Palestinians or the Jordanian Waqf, which serves as the steward for the holy site. Considering how many people have died fighting over this issue over the past week, you’d think that Israel would’ve gotten the message that unilateral actions on what it calls the Temple Mount are unacceptable.
In a related matter, Mahmoud Abbas announced that he would sever all official contact with Israel. At first glance, this seemed like a strong protest by the PA against Israeli violence. But one second glance, it’s not at all. Security consultation between intelligence and counter-terror services on both sides would continue (though this report says otherwise). This is a special bone of contention for Palestinians, who feel that the PA serves as Israel’s errand boy when it comes to maintaining peace for Israel.
All this means that Abbas continues to serve as a corrupt Palestinian quisling on Israel’s behalf. Nor does he earn any credit from the Israelis for doing so. They continue to dismiss him as little more than a Palestinian terrorist. The Israeli attitude of totally schizoid: Abbas is useful when his forces stop terror attacks; but when Palestine asks for anything or expects anything of Israel, the PA becomes a nest of terrorists who can’t possibly be a “partner.”
May I remind you that the rigorous (and often discriminatory) checks we all have to endure at airports is because of (in-part and it’s quite a significant part) Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s targeting aircraft.
Again, it is a spurious and disingenuous argument to single-out the State of Israel for security measures (already in place in many surrounding Moslem states), or is it simply discrimination?
Except that the Palestinians are being denied access to their own place of worship on their own land as a result of a brutal 50 year occupation.
With regard to airport security, I think you’ll find that the changes came as a result of Al-qaeda attacks on US planes. Bear in mind that Israel has been observed (and has admitted to) providing logistical support to al-Nusra (an offshoot of al-Qaeda) in the Golan Heights. Israel has double standards – one standard for itself, the perpetual victim, and a much higher standard for everyone else.
@ gefulla-s(&t: YOu don’t need to remind me of anything. And Palestinian terror attacks at airports have nothing to do with the Haram al Sharif. Once again, a holy site is not an airport.
Do Turkish authorities only search Turkish Jews before permitting them to enter the Istanbul synagogue? Do Iranian security officials have metal detectors erected outside Iranian synagogues and force Iranian Jews to go through them if they wish to enter? No and No. Checkmate buddy.
No checkmate because it is a holy site for Jews also. The fact that if a Jew visiting the mount and his/her lips are moving because they may be praying are thrown off.
So one would assume from this act of puerility that ‘Allah is the greatest…..{what?} that they fear the Jewish god is a greater ‘elative’.
Laughable.
@ shaul:
It is not a “holy site” for most Jews. It is a holy site for Orthodox Jews. Other Jews may see the Kotel as a holy site, but certainly not the Haram al Sharif.
Most Orthodox Jews consider it so holy they won’t step foot on it. So that leaves a minority of a minority who insist on their right to start a holy war over it by trampling the ground underfoot to prove their right to it.
That’s your first mistake. Assuming you know or understand anything. Especially anything about Islam. And your days as a theologian of Islam are far behind you. I suggest you stick to interpreting the views of Pamela Geller and her settler pals. They’re right in your wheelhouse.
I am all for sharing holy sites, but the history of conquest, dispossession and occupation Israel has created has caused so much bad blood that this cannot realistically be expected now. Behave and be patient.
I find that a strange response to Richard’s post, gefilte. You are saying that you support the demeaning treatment because its their (the Palestinians) fault. I’d like to ask you: is it the fault of those particular Palestinians going through the pens or is it Palestinians as a people who are guilty? If its not those particular Palestinians who are guilty, then you are supporting dehumanizing treatment against the innocent. If you are convinced it is all Palestinians who are necessarily guilty then you are a racist.
If you argue it is some Palestinians but not all who are guilty then why not attempt to find solutions which are based in an assumption of dignity?
If that is difficult to comprehend, and leaves you shaking your head, why?
Perhaps the process of Apartheid in Israel, unusual and cruel by any standards, is meant to dehumanize because that is what the oppressors actually want?
“…..All this means that Abbas continues to serve as a corrupt Palestinian quisling on Israel’s behalf. Nor does he earn any credit from the Israelis for doing so. They continue to dismiss him as little more than a Palestinian terrorist. The Israeli attitude of totally schizoid: Abbas is useful when his forces stop terror attacks; but when Palestine asks for anything or expects anything of Israel, the PA becomes a nest of terrorists who can’t possibly be a “partner.” ”
That’s the game; Israel cannot move forward or back, just around in circles. If they were to make a serious peace bid to the PA and Hamas, it would wreck the Israeli weapons industry and the military’s funding. The Border Police would become little more than uniformed customs officials and the whole “Jewish Rambo” mentality would go out the window. So they play Nixonian-Kissengerian chess with the Palestinians and the rest of the Middle East in the style of how Dick and Hank tried to win the war though a series of convoluted steps or at least keep South Vietnam going. The point for the Israelis is to keep the system at roughly status quo until the end of time, no matter if Israel helps to create forces like Hamas and Hezbollah that will either undermine the long-term stability of Israel itself or make any action in Lebanon impossible, much as how the secret bombing of Cambodia and overthrow of the neutral Sihanouk government led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, or how the US-led Phoenix Program (anti-NLF cadre head de facto secret police*) was turned into a form of secret Gestapo and population control mechanism rounding up any dissidents in South Vietnam, which in turn undermined the society and helped military defeat. I do not see Israeli victory.
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* Created by the CIA, South Vietnamese military intelligence, run by US Army Special Forces, sometimes involving the VBI (South Vietnamese FBI) and US Navy SEALS, covered for by USAID, Phoenix was counterinsurgency by using levels of force, torture, file computerization, and secret prisons. Douglas Valentine goes into great detail in his 1990 book “The Phoenix Program” in how it developed from the late 1950s to the actual fully-functioning machine that lasted from 1968 to 1974. It wasn’t Nixon’s idea but the system flourished under his presidency.