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Israel Plans a New Encroachment on Haram al-Sharif
JERUSALEM, July 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Israel and the Palestinians were bracing for a potentially bloody showdown Sunday over one of Islam's holiest sites, where a visit by the hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set off the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation 10 months ago.
Arab and Palestinian leaders warned a ceremony by Israeli ultra-nationalists in Jerusalem near al-Haram al-Sharif, which Israeli Jews call Temple Mount, could set off a long-feared war in a region wracked by non-stop bloodshed since Sharon made his first encroachment on the holy site.
"Israel has not learned from its own dangerous mistakes," Hanan Ashrawi, the former Palestinian cabinet member and new spokeswoman for the Arab League, told a Jerusalem press conference on Saturday.
"Israel is deliberately throwing the whole region into conflict and we advise them not to take such a dangerous step, because Israel itself might not be able to control the consequences," she said.
The tiny Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement won approval from the Israeli supreme court this week to lay a symbolic cornerstone for a new Jewish temple at one of the gates of the Old City, near the ruins of the historic Second Temple.
But it denied the group permission to lay the stone at the site itself, which is also home to the a holy place in Islam, the al-Aqsa mosque compound where the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) is believed to have ascended to heaven.
"In not permitting us to enter the Temple Mount, the authorities prolong the tragedy of the Jewish people," the group's leader Gershom Salomon said after the court ruling Wednesday.
With nerves frayed and tempers at fever pitch as 10 months of violence have claimed more than 660 lives, most of them Palestinian children and teenagers, Arab officials around the region said the ceremony was another dangerous step toward all-out war.
"This is considered an unjustified provocation for the Muslim nation and a violation of the sacred character of Al-Haram Al-Sharif," Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah Khatib said.
The laying of the cornerstone "will lead to a dangerous escalation and Israel must bear responsibility for it," he said in a statement.
Marwan Barghouti, head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, told AFP: "It's a declaration of war .... This will lead to a reaction not only in the region but around the world."
The intifada began after Sharon paid a provocative visit to the compound which many analysts saw as a bid by the former general to oust then prime minister Ehud Barak, whose peace talks with the Palestinians had fallen apart.
Sharon went on to crush Barak in February elections in the midst of the uprising, with a pledge to take a militant approach in dealing with the Palestinians.
But the prime minister has been under increasing fire from Israeli fundamentalists who deplore his self-declared policy of "restraint," including a June 13 ceasefire brokered by the United States aimed at getting the two sides back to negotiations.
More than 50 people have been killed since then, the latest an Israeli teenager gunned down by suspected Palestinian snipers on Thursday.
Israeli helicopters early Saturday bombarded what the army claimed was a Palestinian weapons factory in the Gaza Strip, just hours after a nearby Jewish settlement came under mortar fire. No one was injured in either incident.
Palestinian security sources said the building was a steel factory owned by one of two Palestinian families embroiled in a bitter blood feud that erupted into a fierce gun battle on Friday that left seven dead and more than 40 wounded.
As a Palestinian court in Gaza City began trying some of those alleged to have taken part in Friday's fighting, family members opened fire near the courthouse, an AFP correspondent said. Two people reportedly received light stab wounds.
Meanwhile in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, more than 1,000 people demonstrated calling for the death sentence for five Palestinians accused of treason and collaboration with Israel over the killing of a Fatah member in December.
"We call on the Palestinian Authority and security forces to bring all collaborators to trial and execute them," said spokesman Jamal Barham from the National and Islamic Forces, a Palestinian umbrella group.
The mounting tension and ongoing violence has left the mid-June ceasefire all but meaningless, with Sharon repeatedly vowing there can be no hope of getting back to peace talks unless Arafat reins in anti-occupaiton attacks.
The Palestinians insist Israeli "aggression" has brought the truce to a standstill, leaving many fearing that the region could degenerate into an all-encompassing regional conflict.
A Palestinian group calling itself the Popular Army Front-Brigades of the Return on Saturday issued a hit list of 32 Israelis, including controversial rabbi Ovadia Yosef of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, to be assassinated.
Yosef this week said Arabs in Jerusalem were "swarming like ants" - and would be sent to hell by the Messiah.
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