By Stan Goodenough
Aug 20, 2007The Palestine Liberation Organization/Palestinian Authority will enter into no peace pact with Israel that does not award the Muslim Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" full and irreversible control over the site most sacred to the Jewish people.This is according to a WorldNetDaily report published Friday detailing some of the issues being discussed in secret meetings between officials representing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Arabs negotiating on behalf of PLO/PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas.The meetings are meant to be setting the stage for the International Middle East Peace Conference called for by US President George W. Bush and scheduled to be held in November this year under the chairmanship of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.Headlined with the question, "Israel to give up the Temple Mount?" the report suggested that the Olmert government would be willing to consider such a demand, a suspicion fueled by the fact that three days have passed since its publication without an outright denial from the Prime Minister's Office.This "Palestinian" position, long held by the PLO leadership at the aggressive insistence of the entire Islamic world, remains as solid and unyielding today as it did when it helped scupper the talks at Camp David in July 2000.There, under the benevolent eye of US President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered PLO chief Yasser Arafat all of Gaza, 97 percent of Judea and Samaria - with the other two percent exchanged for pieces of land from "Israel proper" - the Arab-populated eastern parts of Israel's capital, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount.What put an abrupt end to the summit, and caused Arafat to hurl insults in Barak's direction and storm out of the room, was the Israeli leader's groveling plea for his nation to be awarded sovereignty over the rubble from the First and Second Temple periods that lies buried beneath the Temple Mount platform.Arafat could have everything possible for the creation of his state, including the coveted site of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Barak said. All Israel wished for was control over the "sub-terrace spaces" containing dried-out pottery shards and other dusty remains from an era those who discount the Bible don't even believe existed at all.The arch-terrorist responded by returning to the Middle East and igniting the Oslo War - or Al-Aqsa Intifada - that saw gallons of Jewish blood spilled in Israel.But while the explosion of terrorism awakened many deluded Israelis to the true goal and nature of the "Palestinian" leadership and people - who consistently supported and celebrated "suicide" and other massacres - it drove dyed-in-the-wool Jewish leftists to advocate even further extremes and carte blanch appeasement.Thus are influential Israeli secularists now urging the government to indeed relinquish Israel's millennia-old claim to the site millions of Jews prayed daily down the centuries to see their nation restored to."Give them the Temple Mount," wrote commentator Akiva Eldar emphatically in Ha'aretz Sunday of the site the God of the Bible calls His holy hill.To not do so would be to repeat the "mistake" made when then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak balked at handing the Mount over to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in July 2000.Eldar, the diplomatic affairs analyst for Israel's "elites" (who, JNW readers should note, views a strong Christian Zionist-Israel relationship as an "unholy alliance"), said any reluctance to surrender the Temple Mount (or give in to other maximalist Arab demands) was "bad news."Religious Jews won't agree to this surrender, and neither will extremist "Palestinians," he argued. The answer, therefore, is for Olmert "to take away the main contentious elements preoccupying the religious extremists ... and to hand them over to the moderate secularists."However, because it was unrealistic to expect the Islamist Arabs to ever countenance ANY Jewish say over "the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem," the Temple Mount should be offered to the PLO at the November conference and taen away from the Jews altogether. This would keep Hamas quiet, effectually sidelining instead of strengthening them against "moderate" PLO/PA leader Mahmoud Abbas."Receiving the prestigious keys to the holy site will bolster the pragmatists among the Palestinians, and will make it easier for them to relinquish their wish to use the keys to homes they left behind in Jaffa," Eldar explained, handily ignoring the reality that the Arab side is not, nor ever has been, willing to give up an "inch" of the soil it insists is rightfully its own.News reporters meanwhile continue to do a marvelous job of distorting the reality of what is at stake.The Temple Mount houses the third-holiest site to Muslims, they aver, while Israel's holiest site is the Western Wall - a herodian structure buttressing the Temple Mount platform. A solution is therefore well within reach.Historically and biblically, of course, it is the Mount itself - Mount Moriah - which lies under the mosques and behind the wall - that is the holiest site to Bible-believing Jews and Christians
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