Official PA radio news: EDICT: WESTERN WALL FORBIDDEN TO JEWS

Friday Summary and Analysis

In its Friday broadcasts, V.O.P. continued several major trends that have emerged during the week:

• emphasizing the brutal and “CRIMINAL” escalation by Israel that is killing Palestinian civilians and decimating the Palestinian economy;
• pushing Arafat to the front of the internal Palestinian stage again;
• urging outside intervention by Europe and the United Nations against Israel-both as a direct threat to Israel (war crimes tribunal) but also to signal that the Palestinian Authority has other options outside the United States (which it views as pro-Israeli and anti-Iraqi);
• and re-stating that there will be no peace for Israel or the Palestinians until all demands are met, including full Israeli withdrawal, Arab sovereignty over Jerusalem and its holy places, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

In a featured morning interview, PA Cabinet Secretary Ahmad Abd-al-Rahman warned that any military intervention inside PA territory by Israeli forces would “cost Israel dearly.” The comments by Abd-al-Rahman, one of Yasser Arafat’s closest advisors, were re-broadcast throughout the day’s headlines. Abd-al-Rahman and other PA officials (such as Tawfik Tirawi) throughout the week directly threatened Israel with serious military and political consequences ranging from escalating Intifada to counter-assassinations of Israeli officials. Abd-al-Rahman also stressed that one of the Intifada’s goals was to make the continued existence of the settlers untenable, and he noted that the Intifada had succeeded in throwing the settlers into “a complete state of panic.”

V.O.P. broadcast prominently Thursday remarks by an Egyptian Islamic cleric, the Mufti Sheikh Nasser Farid Wasil to the effect that “the Western neighborhood of the Sacred Shrine (a.k.a. Noble Sanctuary/ Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif) is the property of the Muslims, and it is forbidden to designate it as the Wailing Wall.” In other words, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount is NOT ONLY NOT JEWISH PROPERTY, BUT IT IS FORBIDDEN EVEN TO REFER TO IT IN A WAY THAT MIGHT SUGGEST SOME JEWISH CONNECTION TO THE SITE. “And the Sheikh said that the Buraq Wall is the western portion of the blessed Al Aqsa Compound, and there can be NO RECOGNITION OF ANY JEWISH PROPERTY CLAIM TO SUCH A WALL,” V.O.P. quoted from the cleric’s statement. “Because,” the statement quoted by V.O.P. continued, “the placing of any hand by Israeli authorities on the wall is the exercise of sacerdotal functions by Israeli occupation which opposes international legitimacy no matter what amount of time has evolved.”

The second part of the quotation seems to make two points:

• it recalls the findings of a British Mandate-appointed commission on May 19, 1931, giving Jews limited access and Muslim authorities ultimate control over the Western Wall;
• it attacks the practice of Israeli politicians-and Jews generally-of praying at and touching the wall, as both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon did the morning after their respective election victories in 1999 and 2001.

V.O.P. followed the Egyptian cleric’s words with a re-broadcast of a similar ruling last week by (PA-salaried) Jerusalem mufti Sheikh Ikrema al-Sabry that “the Buraq wall is an inseparable part of the Al Aqsa Mosque, and he said that referring to it as ‘haram al-mabka’ (Arabic translation: The Wailing Wall) was forbidden to Muslims..His Authority the Sheikh said Muslims should refer to the site as the Buraq Wall.”

(NOTE: “Buraq” is a reference to the mythic steed of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad. According to legends developed many years after Muhammad’s death, the verses in the Quran describing Muhammad’s mystical night journey from the “mosque of holiness” to the “farthest mosque” (al-Aqsa in Arabic”) were a reference to a journey atop a winged horse-donkey to Jerusalem’s “Al Aqsa” mosque, which was conquered, built and named well after Muhammad-who never left Arabia-died. The legends were developed by various Islamic rulers ranging from Abd-al-Malik to Salah al-din (Saladin) with an eye to buttressing their own power and Muslim defense of Jerusalem, especially against Crusaders. Islamic scholars say that the “Buraq” character is actually heavily influenced by the earlier Jewish messianic theme of “soosya barqa” (Hebrew/Aramaic: the horse or donkey Barka or Barqa) upon whose back the Messiah is expected to arrive. Those wishing to examine the exegesis of the themes may look at The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam by H.A.R. Gibb and J.H. Kramers, p. 65 as well as other entries in same and The Encyclopedia Britannica as well as the writings of Professors S.D. Goitein and H. Lazarus-Yaffe.)