Mohammed Mar'i Saudi Gazette RAMALLAH – A group of Jewish settlers on Sunday stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex in occupied Jerusalem and raised the Israeli flag. Sheikh Najeh Bkeirat, the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound manager, said that the settlers headed by the rightist Rabbi Yehudah Glick entered the complex through the Al-Magharebah gate that connects the mosque with the Al-Buraq Plaza (the Western Wall Plaza). Bkeirat said that the group performed Talmudic prayers and waived the Israeli flag under the guard of a large Israeli police force and Border Guard officers for fear of clashes between them and Palestinian worshipers at the site. The development comes a day after the Israeli daily Haaretz said that the Israeli defense establishment fears that the heightened Jewish activism on the Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex may spark widespread conflict. The report said that since the January general election, right-wing and religious groups have stepped up their efforts to change the status quo between Jews and Muslims at the Muslim's third holiest shrine. According to the report, the Palestinian Authority, the Islamic Movement in Israel and the Arab states are watching the events on the complex with increasing concern. In recent months, hardly a day passes without some incident either on the complex or somehow related to it. The Second Intifada, also known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, broke out in September 28, 2000 following a visit by Israel's then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Al Aqsa Mosque. On last July, the rightist Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel said that the government has to build the second temple on the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex. Ariel, form the rightist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party, reportedly said that the “we have built many buildings, including many ‘small temples',” employing a term used in the Jewish world to refer to synagogues. “We need something that is not like the Temple. We need the Temple. On the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex),” Ariel told participants at the Shilo Conference on Biblical Research and Archaeology. Shilo settlement located to the north of Ramallah in the West Bank. On June, the Jewish Rabbi Yaakov Medan of Har (Mount) Etzion seminary said that the Israeli internal intelligence service Shin Bet supports the visits to the Muslim's third holiest shrine. “The Shin Bet Jewish Division Director told me Jewish presence on the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa Mosque complex) is essential for maintaining our sovereignty. “He told me that in order to accommodate this trend he would increase the number of agents and security personnel on the Temple Mount.” Medan told participants in the Begin Center Conference on the complex. Israel captured East Jerusalem in the June 1967 War, annexed it in 1980, and has since built settlements there that are home to some 300,000 Jewish settlers. Control over the city has been seen as the most sensitive and thorniest issue of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians hope to make East Jerusalem the capital of their future state but the Israel says the city is its eternal capital.
