Egyptians in Tahrir Square chant "To Jerusalem..."

[amor]

They want the al-Aqsa Mosque (Dome of the Rock), and they want to be martyrs!

You can't be a martyr if you don't do something to get yourself killed.

As to wanting to be matyrs easy to chant and then go home to your supper. Most Arabs resent the vile way the Palestinians have been treated, but they don't are enough to put their own lives or even their oil revenues on the line. And the Al Asqa mosque is actually already under the administrative control of the Wafq not of the Israelis.

Yes, but that was at the request of the Israeli government.

With the consent of the Israeli government, as will be the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Consent...... hummmmm...... no, that would not describe it.

Since all the major Israeli politicians including Lieberman and Netanayu favour a setlement that's exactly how I'd describe it

[Bible2]

amor said:

I don't think the idea that a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital is actually that radical.

But it could be seen as so radical by the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel that it could incite them to march on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and destroy the Muslim structures there.

The current, secular government of Israel has been very careful to protect the Muslim Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque ever since Israel took military control of the Temple Mount back in 1967. For the Israeli government knows that if the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel were to destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque (the third holiest sites in Islam, right after those in Mecca and Medina) in order to clear the Temple Mount for the building of a third Jewish temple, this could mean the end of the state of Israel, because Muslim armies and militias could in their total rage descend on Israel en masse in an all-out jihad, attacking Israel simultaneously from three directions, overwhelming its defenses and quickly overrunning its tiny territory, defeating it completely.

While the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are no doubt aware of this danger to Israel should the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque ever be destroyed, they believe that the third Jewish temple must nonetheless be built exactly where the first and second Jewish temples stood: right over the Rock of Sacrifice (the Rock of the Dome of the Rock) on which Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. And the ultra-Orthodox Jews could eventually be brought to the point where they will even desire to see the end of the current, secular state of Israel, believing that only in its demise will God make it possible for them to establish a new, perfectly ultra-Orthodox theocratic state of Israel with its capital in the walled Old City of Jerusalem (which contains the Temple Mount), and to build on the Temple Mount a third Jewish temple before which they can restart the daily Mosaic animal sacrifices and perfectly keep every jot and tittle of the Mosaic law.

The ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are currently very well-armed, for they're allowed by Israel to even have machine guns for self-defense against the Palestinians. If the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel start to get squeezed out of their settlements in Samaria and Judaea (also called the West Bank) and East Jerusalem, because of some "peace deal" handing the whole kit and caboodle over to a Palestinian "state", the ultra-Orthodox Jews in their rage could resort to violence, for they (rightly) see Samaria, Judaea and Jerusalem as being the historically most important and most holy parts of the land of Israel promised by God to the Jews since the time of Abraham.

A fear of the ultra-Orthodox Jews resorting to violence could be one of the reasons that the Israeli government refuses to hinder Jewish settlement activity in Samaria, Judaea and East Jerusalem. It could also be one of the reasons that the U.S. government has been convinced by Israel to back off from requiring any such hindrance. But if down the road pressure from the Arab masses for a Palestinian state becomes so extreme that it begins to threaten to overthrow U.S. hegemony over the Arab world, the U.S. could decide to force Israel to surrender all the Jewish settlements to a Palestinian state.

If the IDF then starts forcing the evacuation of all the settlements, this could so enrage the ultra-Orthodox Jews they could suddenly mass in their tens of thousands, all armed with machine guns, and led by three huge bulldozers they could march as a great army to the Old City of Jerusalem and go up onto the Temple Mount and completely destroy the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. They could then begin to build a third Jewish temple and declare the walled Old City of Jerusalem to be the capital of a new, purely ultra-Orthodox state of Israel, where the Mosaic law will be the law, and where no non-kosher person or thing will be allowed within Old Jerusalem's "Holy walls".