Ultra-nationalist Jews banned from sacred Jerusalem compound
AFP
Date: 03-30-05
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli police banned extremist Jews from demonstrating on Jerusalem's disputed Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount compound, fearing the ultra-nationalists would incite anti-Arab violence.
"After evaluating the situation and intelligence from various security services it appears there is a real possibility that trouble could break out if this Revava group goes to the Temple Mount," police said in a statement.
"As a result, Jerusalem district commander Ilan Franco decided to ban this demonstration," it added.
The extremist Revava (Myriad), planned to rally on the compound -- both the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam -- on April 10, one day before Israeli premier Ariel Sharon meets US President George W. Bush in Texas.
The group is linked to the Kach movement, which advocates the expulsion of all Arabs from Greater Israel, or the biblical expanse of the Jewish kingdom which stretched from the Mediterranean to modern-day Jordan.
Kach was outlawed after one of its members, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Palestinians praying at a disputed Hebron holy site in February 1994.
In Gaza City, the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of the mainstream Fatah faction, threatened to renounce a de facto truce in force on the ground if the Jerusalem shrine was attacked.
"If the Israelis harm our sacred sites, we will overturn any commitment to any ceasefire and react anywhere," Abu Yussef told a news conference flanked by two masked gunmen.
Similar banning orders have been slapped on other extremists wanting to visit the Temple Mount and seen as a potential danger.
Dozens of police reinforcements have recently been deployed around the compound for fear of an extremist attack, which Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei warned would cause the region to "explode".
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