September 29, 2000

Up to eight Palestinians have been shot dead today, according to reports, by Israeli occupation forces who stormed the Haram Al Sharif, or as it is known to Jews, the Temple mount in occupied east Jerusalem. [As of September 30, twenty two Palestinians, including a number of children, had been killed by the occupation forces.]

Hospitals in east Jerusalem have confirmed five dead and dozens injured. Reports are still coming in. This massacre comes almost exactly ten years after the October 8, 1990 massacre when occupation troops stormed the Haram killing seventeen Palestinians.

It is also four years almost to the day since Israeli occupation forces stormed the Haram on September 27, 1996, killing three Palestinians, in the context of the clashes provoked by the opening of a tunnel by Netanyahu. In the September 1996 massacres, approximately 70 Palestinians, and fifteen occupation troops were killed.

Each and every one of these massacres has been as the result of a deliberate provocation by the occupation forces. Today's attack on the Haram is another page of the history of this long and brutal occupation written in blood.

Israel protests that the Temple Mount is the most holy and revered site to Jews. But what kind of country desecrates its sacred places by storming them with armed troops and shooting at worshippers?

Israel, which thrives on conflict and on portraying itself as a victim amongst a sea of enemies, forgets that in history there was no enmity between Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem. It was the Caliph Umar, who when he entered Jerusalem in 636 admonished the Christians for allowing garbage to be dumped on the Temple Mount, and uncovered the Jewish holy places so that Jews could pray there.

It is worth recalling that after the 1990 massacre, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution censoring Israel, and US Secretary of State James Baker criticised Israeli actions. It is a sign of how much the Palestinian position has been weakened, and the United Nations undermined by the US run "peace process," that even those symbolic acts of condemnation are unimaginable today.

But the lesson that the world will take away from today's massacre and all those before it is that Israel can never be a custodian of the holy sites. Israel is not interested in peace or coexistence, but in domination and control. Israel will never provide safety and security, and as long as occupation exists, so will conflict.

Ali Abunimah
ali@abunimah.org
http://www.abunimah.org