Tuesday, October 05, 1999
Barak Opens New Dig near Aqsa Mosque
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Prime Minister Ehud Barak, voicing Israel's claim to
all of Jerusalem, officially opened new archaeological excavations on Sunday near Al Aqsa
Mosque, a flashpoint of Arab-Israeli enmity.
The step was seen as the latest signal by Barak that he would brook no compromise on
the core issue of sovereignty over the holy city in peace negotiations with the
Palestinians.
"We...are dutybound to turn these places surrounding us -- sacred to Islam,
Christianity, and Judaism -- into a bridge and a symbol of freedom of access and worship,
coexistence in peace...under the sovereignty of Israel," Barak said.
As he spoke, police snipers to his side trained rifles with telescopic sights east
towards the cemetery of the Mount of Olives in Arab East Jerusalem and south at the
Palestinian Silwan neighborhood.
The excavations, Barak said, underscored Israelis' ties to their past "as a people
manifesting its freedom in its own nation, in its eternal capital".
Flashpoint
The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine. Muslims call the
area Haram Al-Sharif, are of political and religious sensitivity exploded in bloodshed
three years ago, when Barak's hardline predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a new
entrance punched into a tourist tunnel near the compound.
Sixty Palestinians and 15 Israelis were killed in ensuing gunbattles in the West Bank
and Gaza.
Police said they expected no recurrence of violent protest as a result of the Sunday
ceremony.
The fate of the holy sites and of Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from
Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war, loom as the thorniest of a range of issues to be
tackled in U.S.-brokered talks aimed at a permanent peace accord.
In a move unrecognized by the international community, Israel annexed East Jerusalem
and declared it part of its "eternal capital". Arabs see the city's eastern half
as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Barak ousted Netanyahu last May on a pledge to revive crippled Israeli-Arab peace
talks. But Palestinians have slammed Barak`s tough stance on Jerusalem as identical to
Netanyahu`s.
Source:
http://www.arabia.com/content/news/10_99/aqsa_4.shtml
