A.P. photo/ Sebastian Scheiner -- Western Wall, which A.P. caption mistakenly calls Judaism's holiest site. You can see it is below the Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest site, not its western retaining wall
A lawsuit by the Islamic Historical Society and pressure by Jordan is delaying reconstruction of a walkway to the Western Wall and subsequent widening of the plaza below the Temple Mount.
Neither the Muslim Waqf responsible for its holy site on the Mount, nor the government of Jordan, have jurisdiction over the approaches to the Mount, much less sovereignty over them. The lawsuit accuses the government of intending the walkway to undermine the mosques, so they tumble and the government can rebuild the ancient Temple in their place. The court is waiting to hear from the government. Why the government is submitting to Jordanian demands is not known.
Fact is, the walkway had partly collapsed after a storm. The government wants to repair it. The plaza and approaches need widening to accommodate the growing crowds there (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/, 2/7).
How ridiculous to suppose that an Israeli government that does not let many Jews onto the Mount or at least forbids them from audibly praying on it, wants to inflame the Arab world by felling the mosques and rebuilding a Jewish religious temple there. It would confirm decades of paranoid Muslim Arab accusation.
It is paranoid. No evidence has been adduced. The sect that wants to rebuild the Temple is tiny. The government often bars its members from the Mount. But whatever excavation and construction Israel attempts on or off but near the Mount is called an attempt to destroy the mosque. Sometimes the excavation or construction is some distance from the mosque. Jordan and the Palestinian Authority are unprincipled about this. Jordan has refused to let Israel show it what it is doing and that its plans are harmless.
Arab accusations should be evaluated as false propaganda, much like the Nazi and Communist accusations before them. The Arabs use these accusations also to incite their people to violence and to inhibit normal Israeli exercise of sovereignty. The Arabs, like the Nazis and Communists, do not just negotiate their demands, but they also strive to extort them, as you can see. The Nazis organized ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia to protest non-existent persecution, to give Germany a pretext for taking over the Sudetenland. The Arabs have a similar tactic in the Territories.
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