If not Ramadan, then at least an International Koran Quiz
By Danny Rubinstein
Israeli Arabs have taken upon themselves the mission of defending Islam's holy places.
As it does every year, the Jerusalem municipality this year put out welcome signs in honor of the holy month of Ramadan, at the Damascus Gate and at Herod's Gate. These two gates are the main entrances to the Old City and Al Aqsa mosque for Jerusalem's Arabs, and nearby, on the sidewalks, hundreds of peddlers have spread their wares in recent days. The big hits this year are clothes and shoes made in China. The market is flooded with them, and the prices are amazingly low.
Not everyone is happy about this. Most of the small workshops manufacturing shoes, in the niches above Bab Khan al-Zeit, on the way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, have closed. "There is no reason to work," says one of the shoe manufacturers, a member of the Jamjum family, originally from Hebron, whose father used to sew children's boots in his workshop for many years. Now the Chinese are offering similar boots at half the price.
On the other hand, the masses of shoppers on the street are quite satisfied. "A pair of children's socks cost NIS 1.50, believe me, my wife has stopped washing socks, they wear them and throw them out," says the owner of a pharmacy near the Arab bus station, laughing aloud.
Usually, with the coming of Ramadan, the streets of East Jerusalem take on a festive atmosphere; some are even decorated with chains of colored lights. Toward evening, in past years, after the meal that breaks the fast, many used to go out to take a walk and to have a good time. Many went to the cafes and parks of Ramallah and Jericho at night.
Not this year. The atmosphere in the street is dismal. The month of Ramadan last year was marked by the bloody events of the Al Aqsa Intifada; nobody imagined then that the bloodshed would continue for another year, and that even then, the end would not be in sight.
The Israeli buses
Last Friday was the first day of the fast, and everyone waited to see how many worshipers would come to Al Aqsa. In previous years, despite the official closure of the territories, estimates ranged from 250,000 to 400,000 worshipers on each of the Fridays during the month of Ramadan. This year, like the previous one, their number was estimated at only a few tens of thousands. Some got stuck at the roadblocks at the entrance to the city, and many of those who managed to make it were Israeli Arabs.
Anyone who strolls in the streets around the Old City on Fridays and Saturdays is very familiar with the picture. Dozens of Israeli buses park at every corner, and it's clear that they have brought Muslims from the Galilee, the Triangle and the Negev to pray at Al Aqsa. All the buses bear signs of transportation companies from Afula, Hadera and Nazareth: the Ein Mahl Bus Company, Amico Tours, Metaylei Zamir, Casino Flamingo, Hametayel Netanya, Tiyulei Netzah, and Ram Shen's minibuses - all are Israeli companies.
The late Hassan Tahbub, who was the Waqf (Muslim religious trust) and religious affairs minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), always used to say that the policy of closure of the territories practiced by Israeli governments left Al Aqsa undefended. Believers from all over the world cannot usually come to Al Aqsa, and the closure prevents even the 3 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from coming to Jerusalem.
Those remaining, aside from the Arabs of Jerusalem, are the Israeli Muslims, and they have taken upon themselves the historic role of defending the Islamic holy places in the city. The Al Aqsa Association of Sheikh Raid Salah from Umm al-Fahm, the principal Muslim leader in Israel, has for years been carrying out the restoration and renovation in the mosques of the Temple Mount. Hundreds of Muslims from Israel come on the weekends to work as volunteers at the mosques. The Islamic Movement also funds some of the transportation of Israeli Arab worshipers to Al Aqsa.
There may be political and social differences between the Arabs who are Israeli citizens and those of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but there is no religious difference. "The battle for Al Aqsa completely erases the Green Line," they say both in the territories and in Israel. And in light of this, one can understand the tension the Al Aqsa Intifada causes for Israeli Arabs.
Before Ramadan, Sheikh Yousef Salameh, the PA's deputy minister for Waqf and Religious Affairs, announced the International Al Aqsa Competition for the Study of the Koran, whose final stage will take place in another two weeks. This is a competition similar to the Israeli Bible Quiz, and according to Sheikh Salameh, some 1,560 candidates from all over the Muslim world are participating. In the preliminary competitions, held in the various countries, 50 participants became finalists, and they are planning to come to visit the PA on the 20th day of the month of Ramadan.
"That is our way of defending Al Aqsa and the Koran," said Sheikh Salameh in interviews to the Palestinian media. Accordingly, when one of the interviewers asked him if the Waqf guards on the Al Aqsa walls carry weapons, he answered, "Their only weapon is faith."
Denying the Jewish link
Israeli researcher Dr. Yitzhak Reiter, who recently edited the book "The Sovereignty of God and Man - Sanctity and Political Centrality on the Temple Mount" (Hebrew, published by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies), writes that since the beginning of Islam, the Temple Mount (al-Haram al-Sharif) has flourished during three periods, all of them times when control of Jerusalem passed into non-Muslim hands: the Crusader period, the British Mandate period, and the Israeli period after June 1967 [when Israel recaptured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the wake of the Six-Day War].
Reiter says that although the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem are only in third place in terms of religious importance (after Mecca and Medina, located in Saudi Arabia), politically, they are in first place. This fact has received particular emphasis during the past year, since the failure of the Camp David summit in July 2000.
During those talks, when the final status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount was discussed between then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and their associates, Israeli demands for sovereignty or some hold on the Temple Mount came up for the first time.
Since then, Muslim spokesmen in general, and Palestinians in particular, have tried to deny any Jewish connection to the holy place. "Historians and archaeologists have not found any scientific proof of a Jewish presence in Al Aqsa," is a declaration that has recently been made repeatedly by Palestinian Mufti Sheikh Ikrima Sabri and other Palestinian spokesmen.
Palestinian leaders such as Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University, or PA Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Ziyad Abu-Zayad, acknowledge the ancient Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, but they also completely accept the official Palestinian position demanding total Palestinian sovereignty over the entire Mount. Sheikh Yousef Salameh explained in an interview in the Palestinian weekly Jerusalem Times on November 16, that the Israeli claims to rights in Al Aqsa are bogus. As evidence, he brings a Muslim tradition that says that the Covenant of Omar (signed at the time of the capture of the city in 638 CE, between Caliph Omar Ibn Al-Khattab and the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem) included a clause forbidding Jews to live in Jerusalem. (This Muslim tradition is not considered reliable by various experts.)
The sheikh also claims (correctly) that the British investigative commission for the events of 1929 [Arab riots] determined that the Western Wall, as well as the entire Temple Mount, belong to the Muslims. But the sheikh does not mention that the commission also approved the right of the Jews to conduct prayers and religious rituals at the Western Wall.
In what way are the prayers at Al Aqsa this year different from those of previous years? asked the reporters from an Arab television network, who interviewed an elderly man leaving the mosque enclave via the council gate (Bab al-Majlis). The man thought for a moment and said: "Every year, at Ramadan, the Egyptians send a few readers with pleasant voices who read parts of the Koran at the mosque; for some reason, they didn't come this year - and I was very sad.
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