The Latest Incitement over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

Since taking Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, Israel has always shown caution and restraint when it comes to the Temple Mount. In particular, prayer on the Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, has been barred to Jews. In recent weeks, Palestinian leaders have been spreading unfounded rumors of a threat to the status quo—a self-evidently false pretext for mounting numbers of terrorist attacks. Recently, Israeli security discovered stockpiles of bottles, stones, and Molotov cocktails in the al-Aqsa Mosque itself. Jerusalem is on the brink of a conflagration, writes David Horovitz:

Amid the awful current upsurge in terrorism and violence in Jerusalem—the shooting of Yehudah Glick, the spate of “suicide driver” attacks, the riots in East Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, the clashes on the Temple Mount itself—it has been profoundly dismaying to watch interview after TV interview with Palestinian bystanders in stone-strewn Arab neighborhoods, older men not involved in the violence, urging Israel just to stay away from al-Aqsa, not to pray at al-Aqsa, to do anything but encroach upon al-Aqsa. At the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism, it is clear, the Jews have no legitimacy whatsoever for many ordinary Palestinians.

Hamas, for whom Israel has no legitimacy at all, is doing everything it can to whip up passions around the falsely alleged dangers to al-Aqsa, inflating and exaggerating and misrepresenting every spark of friction in the hope of igniting the holy war it seeks in order to bring about Israel’s demise. So, too, provocateurs within Israel’s own Arab community—notably in the northern branch of the Islamic Movement. Some Arab Knesset members are also guilty of exaggerating and mischaracterizing the true dimensions of what has been playing out in and around the Temple Mount in recent weeks. The increasingly extremist Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been adding fuel to the fire.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Hamas, Jerusalem, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian terror, Temple Mount

The Mass Expulsion of Palestinians Is No Solution. Neither Are Any of the Usual Plans for Gaza

Examining the Trump administration’s proposals for the people of Gaza, Danielle Pletka writes:

I do not believe that the forced cleansing of Gaza—a repetition of what every Arab country did to the hundreds of thousands of Arab Jews in 1948— is a “solution.” I don’t think Donald Trump views that as a permanent solution either (read his statement), though I could be wrong. My take is that he believes Gaza must be rebuilt under new management, with only those who wish to live there resettling the land.

The time has long since come for us to recognize that the establishment doesn’t have the faintest clue what to do about Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want it. Jordan doesn’t want it. Iran wants it, but only as cannon fodder. The UN wants it, but only to further its anti-Semitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West. Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians blame Palestinians for destroying their countries.

Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the Palestinian Authority have not worked. Rebuilding has not worked. Destruction will not work. A “two-state solution” has not arrived, and will not work.

So what’s to be done? If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it. This time will be different. . . . What could possibly make you believe this other than ideological laziness?

Read more at What the Hell Is Going On?

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Palestinians