Tensions have been high around the Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem all week., culminating in a violent clash between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces earlier today in which “dozens” of people were injured. It’s gotten bad enough that the U.N. Security Council chimed in on the subject today:
The council statement says Muslims at the site “must be allowed to worship in peace, free from violence, threats and provocations.”
It also says that “visitors should be without fear of violence or intimidation.
“The members of the Security Council called for the exercise of restraint, refraining from provocative actions and rhetoric, and upholding unchanged the historic status quo” at the compound “in word and in practice,” added the statement.
There are growing Palestinian fears that the Israeli government is about to open the site up to worshipers of all faiths (i.e., to Jews), and the stream of Jewish visitors to the site this week, following Rosh Hashanah on Sunday, has apparently put people on edge. Actually this is a particularly active time for both faiths, with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (coming up on Tuesday) coinciding with the Hajj (also Tuesday) and the subsequent Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha, which is officially on Wednesday but is usually celebrated over several days). Eid al-Adha and Yom Kippur coincided last year as well, on October 4, but though authorities were worried about the potential for violence then, things didn’t get bad until a couple of weeks later. Still, the potential for something very serious to happen in Jerusalem over the next week or so is pretty high and keeps getting higher.
All things being equal, I’m of the opinion that people should be allowed to worship wherever they want, whenever they want, within obvious limits (if you’re trying to bring back Aztec human sacrifice, then we may have a problem). But all things are definitely not equal when it comes to Israel and Palestine. Control over and freedom of access to Al-Aqsa is one of the only things the Palestinians have, particularly right now when they’re literally being written out of history by Israeli settler groups. That makes it valuable in two ways: as a source of Palestinian dignity, and as a chip (one of the very, very few that the Palestinians have) that could be used in negotiations toward a fair peace deal. The Israelis are certainly capable of taking control of the site away from the Palestinians by force, of imposing new terms on its use whether the Palestinians like it or not, but I wouldn’t expect that they’ll be able to do so without causing a fight.
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