I guess its time for Abu Mazen to show his "nice guy" face again. The world's favorite moderate terrorist is threatening Synagogues over the controversial dig near the Temple Mount. The Fatah subgroup, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, has said it will retaliate against Shuls across the world for this "offense" against Islam.
The Aksa Martyrs Brigades is lead by Mr. Abbas and has committed dozens of atrocities against civilians, including the rocket attacks on Sedrot and the recent homicide bombing in Eilat.
So I have a question for Condi Rice. If Hamas is a resistance group, and Abbas is a moderate, just what the HELL would you call an extremist?
Aksa Martyrs vow to attack synagogues over Mughrabi
Etgar Lefkovits and jpost staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 7, 2007
The Fatah-affiliated Aksa Martyrs Brigades threatened on Wednesday to attack synagogues if Israel continued its excavation near the Temple Mount ahead of the planned construction of a new bridge to the Mughrabi Gate.
In a press release sent to newspapers, the group announced that all synagogues would become legitimate targets and that "the sanctity of the Al Aksa Mosque should not be less than that of the synagogues."
The terror organization joined scores of other Islamic organizations in calling on the Palestinian people to hold processions and angry protests until the construction is stopped.
A Jerusalem court on Wednesday ordered the fiery leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel to stay out of the Old City of Jerusalem for the next ten days, after he tried to force his way to the site of a contested archeological excavation near the Temple Mount, police said.
Sheikh Raed Salah was one of seven Israeli Arabs detained by police near the Dung Gate on Wednesday morning.
Salah and his supporters had scuffled with police guarding the workers carrying out the salvage excavation near the Temple Mount.
The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ordered Salah and three of his associates to stay 150 meters outside the walled Old City for the next ten days, Jerusalem police spokeswoman Sigal Toledo said.
In court, Salah accused Israel of "the crime of demolishing a part of the blessed Al Aksa compound" and of "pushing the whole region to religious war."
The archeological excavation underway ahead of the planned construction of a new bridge to the Mughrabi Gate is taking place dozens of meters outside the Temple Mount compound.
Salah, who heads the extremist northern branch of the Islamic Movement of Israeli Arabs which denies Israel's legitimacy, had previously called for an intifada over the archeological dig by the Jerusalem holy site on Tuesday.
In the past, Salah has served a two year sentence for a series of security offenses, including financingHamas activities.
For the second straight day, police had barred non-Muslims from entering the Temple Mount onWednesday and limited Muslim entry to the holy site to men over the age of 45 with Israeli id's, in a largely successful effort to ward off violence at the compound.
In sporadic stone-throwing clashes in east Jerusalem, seven Arab teens were arrested by police.Police, who are bracing for renewed violence following Friday Muslim prayers, are expected to extend restrictions at the holy site in the coming days. Meanwhile, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday urged Islamic nations toretaliate against Israel.
Khamenei did not say what sort of response he intended, but he said the Islamic world should make Israel "regret" what it is doing, The Associated Press reported. The eight-month construction project is meant to replace a decades-old stone ramp that partially collapsed in a snowstorm three years ago.
The Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest and Islam's third holiest site, has been the scene of violence in the past, which later spilled out across the country.
Israel's opening of the Western Wall tunnels in 1996 sparked a wave of Palestinian violence that killed 80 people, while Ariel Sharon's 2000 visit to the Temple Mount as opposition leader was followed by the latest round of Palestinian violence that has continued for over six years.
Israeli efforts to downplay the dig near the bitterly contested holy site -- known as the tinderbox of the Middle East -- fell on deaf ears in the Arab public, with Arab media playing up the heated rhetoric of Islamic officials blasting the work.
In a sign of continued tension, the Islamic Movement announced that it planned to hold a demonstration Friday against the dig. There has never been any archeological excavations on the Temple Mount due to religious sensitivities.
This is not really true--there has never been JEWISH excavations.
According to decades-old regulation in place at the Temple Mount, Israel maintains overall security control at the site, while the Wakf, or Islamic Trust, is charged with day- to-day administration of the ancient compound.
The latest controversy comes as an ancient wooden pulpit destroyed four decades ago by a deranged Australian tourist hoping to hasten the coming of the Messiah was restored in the El Aksa Mosque with Israel's blessing, and as Jordan presses ahead with plans to build a fifth minaret at the site.
Last decade, Wakf officials built the largest mosque in Israel in an underground architectural support of the Temple Mount known as the Solomon's Stables, throwing dozens of truckloads of antiquities mixed with rubble in a garbage dump outside the Old City.
The construction of the mosque, which was carried out without any archeological supervision, was later called an "unprecedented archeological crime" by Israel's top archeological body for its massivedestruction of antiquities at the site.
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