Temple Mount

JERUSALEM -- After imposing strict controls on access, Israeli police allowed Moslem worshipers to return yesterday to the Temple Mount for regular weekly prayers and refrained from interfering when the worshipers briefly chanted slogans.Soldiers and police set up a series of administrative hurdles to prevent all but the most determined Palestinians from reaching Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the site of the clash Monday in which police shot and killed 19 Palestinians and wounded more than 140 others while trying to stop stone-throwing.

J -The Israeli government adds two culturally rich, millennium-old historic sites to a list of national treasures, and riots break out, followed by international condemnation. Yet, it is precisely this cynical, predictable response that demonstrates why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right to add the Tomb of Rachel and the Cave of the Patriarchs to Israel's National Heritage Sites. There is no nation with firmer roots in a land than the Jewish people in the greater land of Israel.

JERUSALEM -- Rejecting criticism of the police shootings that killed 19 Palestinians, Israeli authorities tightened their grip on the Temple Mount yesterday by sealing it off from worshipers and arresting a Moslem prayer leader.While the United States and other countries criticized what they said was the excessive use of force, Israeli officials maintained that police had acted properly in the clash at the Temple Mount and sought to cope with aftereffects that continued to spread.Yesterday, police closed the Temple Mount to all visitors for the first time in memory and fired tear gas after scuffling with would-be worshipers trying to reach the Al Aqsa mosque for midmorning prayers.

After 2,000 years of indignity and ignominy, Herod the Great has finally gotten his revenge. During their revolt against Roman rule over Judea between 66 and 72 A.D., Jews who remembered King Herod as a Roman puppet smashed his sarcophagus, which had been interred with royal pomp about 70 years before. Christians have identified him as a baby killer who forced Jesus' family to flee Bethlehem. And Herod's habit of having his rivals and relatives killed has hardly burnished his image. True, he built monumental projects - not only Masada and Caesarea but also the grand expansion of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, the best-known remnant of which is the Western Wall.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed yesterday to appoint an independent inquiry into the violence on the Temple Mount even as doubts emerged about the government's allegation that Palestinians had planned the eruption.Fresh violence broke out yesterday. Israeli troops shot and wounded 17 Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank during protests against Monday's deaths, according to Palestinian sources. Incidents also were reported in Israel itself.Meanwhile, Israel's government braced for condemnation by the United Nations Security Council over its handling of the rioting Monday, when police killed 19 Palestinians and wounded about 140.In setting up the independent panel, Mr. Shamir stopped an investigation by police after complaints that the police should not be investigating themselves.

JERUSALEM - At least five people were slightly injured and a Palestinian was arrested yesterday when Israeli police confronted Palestinians throwing rocks at Jews at one of Jerusalem's holiest sites. The flare-up took place at the Temple Mount, revered by Jews as the site of the two Jewish temples destroyed in ancient times. The spot is sacred to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, which contains Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. While the disturbance was relatively minor, it took place at a site that has often been a tinderbox in a city whose status remains one of the most complex and delicate issues between Israelis and Palestinians.

JERUSALEM -- Israel rejected yesterday a second U.N. Security Council resolution asking it to cooperate with a U.N. mission investigating the Temple Mount violence, highlighting the government's anger at both the United Nations and the United States.An aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir described the latest resolution, approved unanimously Wednesday, as "anti-Israel" and said it would not change the government's decision against cooperating, despite a direct appeal by President Bush to Mr. Shamir.

ARIEL SHARON is a Jew. He shares with all Jews a rich heritage and cultural legacy known as the Temple Mount. This is, after all, the place where Abraham came to sacrifice his son to God. It is the site of the first and second Jewish Temples, where the Jewish people worshiped for hundreds of years. It remains the site of rich archaeological treasures from these Temples. It is Judaism's holiest place, and the focal point of every practicing Jew's prayers. Ten days ago, former defense minister Ariel Sharon had the good fortune to be able to do that which Jews dispersed for centuries in the diaspora could only hope, dream and pray for: On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year - the liturgy of which is replete with recollections of Abraham's selfless act on the Temple Mount and with prayers for a restoration of the divine presence to this site - Sharon dared to peacefully tread upon this hallowed Jewish ground.

JERUSALEM - Bloodshed and anger rocked the Holy City and the West Bank yesterday as Israeli police used live ammunition and rubber bullets to quell Palestinian rioting at a plateau sacred to Muslims and Jews and a Palestinian policeman shot and killed an Israeli counterpart on a joint patrol. In all, the past three days of clashes and bombings have killed four Palestinians and two Israelis, injured hundreds, and brought the worst violence in four years to the Temple Mount, or Haram al Sharif, the shrine at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's rightist government decided yesterday not to cooperate with a United Nations delegation created to investigate last week's Temple Mount riots, causing an open split with the United States.Foreign Minister David Levy said that the Cabinet voted unanimously against formally receiving the three-member U.N. panel being dispatched by Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar and that ministers found the Security Council's condemnation of Israel "totally unacceptable."The United States supported sending the team as part of a compromise with Arab states to prevent the Security Council from demanding even tougher action in response to the violence here last Monday.

JERUSALEM - At least five people were slightly injured and a Palestinian was arrested yesterday when Israeli police confronted Palestinians throwing rocks at Jews at one of Jerusalem's holiest sites. The flare-up took place at the Temple Mount, revered by Jews as the site of the two Jewish temples destroyed in ancient times. The spot is sacred to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, which contains Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. While the disturbance was relatively minor, it took place at a site that has often been a tinderbox in a city whose status remains one of the most complex and delicate issues between Israelis and Palestinians.

THE LATEST buzzword among the chattering classes who track the minutiae of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is hudna, a Quranic term coined by the Prophet Mohammed to designate a temporary cease-fire. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is using the term to describe his feckless efforts to defang Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, terrorist groups whose homicide bombers have killed hundreds of Israelis in coffee shops, discotheques, bars, buses and on street corners, including the one Tuesday night in Jerusalem that killed at least 20 people.

A reader called last week to complain that I'd quoted Avrum Burg in an article from Jerusalem: "He is the most out-of-touch Israeli politician you could have picked." Doves are not popular in Israel these days. But Burg is in touch with the history of his people and, offensive as the idea is to many of them these days, he still believes there will one day be peace between his people and the Palestinians, and that there will be two states between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

JERUSALEM - In almost any other city, it would be just a wall with a bulge. Almost anywhere else, the wall would be repaired without people taking notice. This wall, however, is part of Jerusalem's most disputed religious site, may be in danger of collapse and has sparked another argument between Palestinians and Israelis. A bulge 35 feet long has appeared in the southern retaining wall built 2,000 years ago during the reign of King Herod at the base of the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

JERUSALEM -- Hundreds of Israeli police stormed the city's most fought-over religious shrine yesterday and secured the hilltop compound after rocks rained down on Jewish worshippers bowed in prayer at the Western Wall. It marked the third time that police have gone to the area, sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September. The uprising began after Ariel Sharon, then the main Israeli opposition leader, visited the Temple Mount, site of the Al Aqsa mosque compound, triggering clashes a week apart that left seven Palestinians dead.

JERUSALEM - Fresh from his landslide victory, Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon set about trying to convince a skeptical world that he won't plunge the Middle East into worse violence, dispatching advisers to Washington and Jordan, and publicizing what an aide called a "very warm" letter from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. But Sharon also signaled anew his refusal to share sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians by visiting the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine and part of the base of the Temple Mount.

A tunnel may seem an implausible spark for mayhem.But it was Israel's decision to open a 2,000-year-old tunnel in Jerusalem's Old City that ignited the violence that has taken at least 68 lives -- 54 Palestinians and 14 Israelis. What mattered was that the tunnel lay at the base of the Temple Mount. Because for Jews and Muslims, the Temple Mount is the holiest ground of a holy city.When prophets spoke of Last Days or of God's final settling of accounts, the presumed setting was the Temple Mount, a natural plateau west of the Mount of Olives.

JERUSALEM -- Hundreds of Israeli police stormed the city's most fought-over religious shrine yesterday and secured the hilltop compound after rocks rained down on Jewish worshippers bowed in prayer at the Western Wall. It marked the third time that police have gone to the area, sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September. The uprising began after Ariel Sharon, then the main Israeli opposition leader, visited the Temple Mount, site of the Al Aqsa mosque compound, triggering clashes a week apart that left seven Palestinians dead.

YASSER ARAFAT has acted with "ambivalent attitudes toward terrorism, and at times outright complicity." The Palestinian Authority's non-compliance with its commitments has "actually led to a repeated pattern of abuse, misconduct and outright violence on the part of the PA." Right-wing rhetoric? No. These and similar statements represent the official position of Israel's government set forth in a white paper, "Palestinian Authority and P.L.O. Non-Compliance with Signed Agreements: A Record of Bad Faith and Misconduct."