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July 30, 2004/Av 5 5764, Vol. 56, No. 45
Extremist plot or political agenda?
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - If there is one thing common to many apocalyptic fantasies about the Middle East, it is that the next world war will begin with an attempt to blow up the Al-Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
This week, Israeli officials warned that they feared Jewish extremists might be planning just such an attack.
Tzachi Hanegbi, Israel's minister of internal security, said in a television interview over the weekend that intel-ligence services fear the threat could grow as right-wingers seek to block Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.
"There is real danger that they will want to make use of this most sensitive, most explosive and most sacred site to the Muslims to stage a terrorist attack on the site, whether in a mosque or against worshipers, and then hope that a chain reaction will lead to the collapse of the political process," Hanegbi said.
But to Israel's right wing, Hanegbi's comments were similar to frequent warnings from Israeli officials about Jewish extremists allegedly poised to strike: The claims, though politically useful, are made without any substantial evidence about who the conspirators may be, how many of them there are and how advanced their supposed plans are.
But, he added, "There are alarming indications that thoughts (about blowing up the mosque) are substantial, and not only philosophical."
Leaders of Israel's settler movement describe such a vague warning as an attempt to delegitimize their protest campaign against Sharon's disengage-ment plan.
"They are simply setting the stage for preventive arrests among the so-called 'hilltop youths,'" said veteran settler lead-er Elyakim Haetzni of Kiryat Arba, referring to young settlers who have zealously defended settlement outposts throughout the West Bank and who are the most heated opponents of Israeli withdrawal.
According to one uncon-firmed report, unnamed "right-wing radicals" plan to stage a mega-attack on the Temple Mount, possibly by flying an airplane into Muslim worshipers during prayers.
The buildings on the mount - the Al-Aksa Mosque and the gold-topped Dome of the Rock - have attracted Jewish fanatics since the early 1980s, and blowing up these landmarks was one of the grand designs of the "Jewish underground" that operated during that period.
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