Middle East - AP
Israeli Minister Warns of Extremists
Date: Sat, Jul 24, 2004
By STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM - Israel's public security minister on Saturday warned that Jewish extremists could attack a site holy to Muslims and Jews, hoping to provoke violence and wreck Israeli plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) and parts of the West Bank.
Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said he had no knowledge of any specific plot to attack the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem — the third holiest shrine in Islam — but intelligence assessments said the danger of such an action was growing.
The sacred hilltop in the Old City of Jerusalem is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. Some fundamentalist Jews believe that destroying the mosque compound and rebuilding the temple will bring about the coming of the Messiah.
"We feel that the level of the threat to the Temple Mount, in the sense of an attack by extremist Jewish fanatics in order to reshuffle the cards, to be a catalyst for change to the whole political process, has risen in recent months, or weeks, higher than it has ever been in the past," Hanegbi told Israel's Channel Two television.
It was the latest in a series of warnings by Israeli officials.
Last week, the head of Israel's internal security service said that as many as 200 Jewish settlers want to see Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) dead because of his pullout plan, although Shin Bet chief Aviv Dichter said that his agents had not uncovered any specific assassination plot.
Tension spiraled after Sharon pledged Israel would abandon the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements by the end of 2005 as part of a strategy to reduce attacks on Israelis and preserve Israel's Jewish character by vacating territory with large Arab populations.
In the 1980s, Jewish militants plotted to bomb the Al-Aqsa complex but were arrested before they could execute the attack. Separately, American Alan Goodman in 1982 staged a shooting spree outside the mosques, killing two Arabs and touching off days of rioting.
With both Israel and the Palestinians claiming the site, the conflict has torpedoed several rounds of peace talks. The current round of Palestinian-Israeli violence erupted after Sharon, then Israel's opposition leader, visited the site in September 2000.
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