Likud official infers Temple Mount not Jewish holy place

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 Printer-friendly version By Stan Goodenough
October 17, 2007

The head of the Likud Party's foreign relations department gave a massive boost to the claims of Islam - Israel's most implacable enemy - Tuesday when he inferred that Jerusalem's Temple Mount was not sacred to the Jewish people.

Arab and other Muslim leaders and clerics, who assert that the hill is Islam's third holiest site, have long and fiercely maintained that the Jews have no historical connection or claim to the outcrop the Bible calls God's "holy hill."
While secular Jews often appear content to limit their "right" to the Western Wall, Israelis who have the fear of the Lord and who know that their nation's First and Second Temples were built on top of the mount will not agree to relinquishing it to the followers of another god.
Zalman Shoval, a former ambassador to the United States, and traditionally a right thinker on Israeli security issues, told a meeting of the Foreign Press Association that the Likud - which is led by former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - could allow an Arab or Muslim country to administer the site for the sake of securing peace for Israel.
"It is not in Israel's interest to be in any way in charge of the holy places other than those of the Jewish faith," the secular Shoval said, adding he believed there were "ways to adopt formulae to this end."
Using politico-speech (universally known as the language of compromise) Shoval first insisted that "the question of Israel's sovereignty in Jerusalem, and first and foremost the Temple Mount, is not negotiable."
But he then reminded his audience that "actually there have been plans for a long time" to find a way around this "immovable" political reality.
"Arab and Muslim countries, Jordan for instance, could play a leading role," and it was even possible that the Palestinian Authority could "run" the Temple Mount if there were real peace.
To try support his untenable position, Shoval pointed to the example set by Italy and the Vatican, who in 1929 agreed that (apart from Vatican City) properties in Italy belonging to the "Holy See" were under Italian sovereignty while being administered by the Roman Catholic Church.
But while Italy and the Vatican are historically both "Christian" entities, no such agreement has ever been made between Muslims and those they call "infidels."
According to the teachings and traditions of Islam, Jewish or Christian sovereignty is never permissible over territory that has - at any point in history - been under Muslim control.
As Hebrew University Professor of Islamic Studies Moshe Sharon has explained before audiences from all over the world: Islam holds that "any territory that comes under Islamic rule cannot be de-Islamized. ... It is unthinkable that non-Muslims shall rule over Muslims."
More importantly even than this fact, devout Jews and Christians hold that the Bible has the last word on what has been called "the hottest piece of real estate in the world."
In it, God promises that, no matter how the world's nations plot to separate the Jews from their land, He plans to establish His King on His holy hill in Zion. (Psalm 2:1-6)
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