Palestinian President: Closing Jerusalem holy site ‘a declaration of war’
updated 4:14 PM EDT, Thu October 30, 2014
(CNN) — Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis spiked in Jerusalem Thursday as Israel closed access to the Temple Mount, a move Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called a “declaration of war.”
Presidential spokesman
Nabil Abu Rudeineh told CNN that the decision to close off the site,
which includes the al-Aqsa Mosque, was a “brazen challenge” and “grave
behavior” that would lead to “further tensions and instability.”
Ofir Gendelman, the
Israeli Prime Minister’s spokesman for Arab media, tweeted Thursday that
the closure was “temporary & meant to prevent riots &
escalation as well as to to restore calm and status quo to the Holy
Places.”
Later Thursday, Israeli
police announced that they would reopen, in part, the Temple Mount. The
site will only be open to men over the age of 50 and women of all ages
on Friday to prevent demonstrations by young Muslim men, police
spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
The police presence in
the eastern part of Jerusalem has been beefed up, and security will be
increased around the old city and alley ways in the area of the al-Aqsa
Mosque, said the spokeswoman.
The Jerusalem complex is
the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest site in Islam. Jews
call it the Temple Mount and Muslims know it as Haram al-Sharif (the
Noble Sanctuary).
Israeli police shot and
killed a suspect in Glick’s shooting Wednesday night. An Israeli
counterterror unit surrounded the house of the unnamed suspect in the
shooting, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said on Twitter.
He said the man opened fire on police, who shot and killed him.
Glick is an advocate of
Jewish access to Muslim holy sites. After he gave a presentation in
Jerusalem on Wednesday night, a man on a motorcycle shot him.
Rosenfeld described the attack on Glick as an “attempted assassination.” The rabbi was hospitalized in serious condition.
Contested site
Rabbinic sages say that
God gathered dust from the spot to create Adam, the first man, before
setting him loose in the Garden of Eden.
Jewish tradition holds
that the Temple Mount also contains Mount Moriah, where Abraham, the
Hebrew patriarch, is said to have nearly sacrificed his son — under
God’s orders — before an angel intervened.
Muslims believe that the
Prophet Mohammed was carried on a flying steed from Mecca to the
Jerusalem site during his miraculous Night Journey, said Muqtedar Khan,
an expert on Islam and politics at the University of Delaware.
“It’s all about al-Aqsa,” said Khan. “That’s why all Muslims are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.”
According to Islamic
tradition, the night journey took Mohammed to the same Jerusalem rock on
which Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, where the Muslim founder led
Abraham, Moses and Jesus in prayers as the last of God’s prophets.
That rock is now said to sit in the Dome of the Rock, whose golden roof gleams above the Old City skyline.
In the 1980s, Jewish
radicals plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa, believing
that it would lead to a spiritual revolution and usher in the Messiah.
In 2000, the Second
Intifada — a 5-year-long Palestinian uprising — was sparked,
Palestinians say, after Ariel Sharon, then a candidate for Israeli prime
minister, visited the compound surrounding al-Aqsa.
Sharon insisted that his
visit was not intended to provoke Palestinians, but many saw it as an
attempt to underline Israel’s claim to Jerusalem’s holy sites.
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