Israel: Fear, Jewish extremists crash plane on Temple Mount

Hanegbi: Jewish extremists may attack Temple Mount

Etgar Lefkovits Jul. 24, 2004


Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi warned Saturday that Jewish extremists may try to carry out an attack against Arabs on Jerusalem's Temple Mount in order to torpedo Israel's planned unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

"We sense that the threat level on the Temple Mount by extremist and fanatic Jewish elements, in order to upset the situation, and be a a catalyst for change of the political process, has increased in the last few months, and especially in the last few weeks, more than any time in the past," Hanegbi told Channel Two's Meet the Press.

Hangebi added that while there was no intelligence information pointing to specific suspects who are planning an attack, there were "worrying indications" that such plans were "not just theoretical."

"There is a danger that they would want to make use of the most explosive target, in hope that the ensuing chain reaction would bring about the destruction of the political process," he said.

Far-Right activists from the outlawed Kahane group released a statement Sunday saying that Hangebi was preparing the ground for administrative detentions.

In light of the warnings, police are considering banning certain extremist Jews from entering the Temple Mount, something which they have done periodically in the past, or placing certain individuals under "administrative detention," a draconian move usually reserved for suspected Palestinian terrorists.

Carmi Gillon, former head of the Shin Bet security service, said that an attack of this nature could pose an existential threat to the state's existence.

"In a diplomatic context, one thing is certain, if God forbid one stone were to fall from the top of the Dome of the Rock, any and all peace process, any and all chances for a solution to this conflict will evaporate completely. The other side will never stand for it. I hope that the Shabak and the police are making maximum efforts to obtain all the information they need to thwart something catastrophic like this," Gillon said.

"If we're talking about a clear and present danger to the existence of Israel, it's an attack on the Temple Mount. If there were to be an attack on the Temple Mount, the chances that the Muslim world will rise up and fall on us, and millions of Iranians will march to Jerusalem, are very, very high. There are limits to this game," Gillon said.

"I think we need to understand that he Temple Mount needs to remain outside of this game," he added.

"The security forces need to be given all the tools, including administrative detentions, whatever is required even a remote possibility of something like this happening."

Former Internal Security Minister and vocal anti-disengagement leader Uzi Landau on Sunday said that everything possible needed to be done to prevent an attack on the Temple Mount, and called on those against the disengagement plan to understand that an attack on the Mount would seriously harm their interests. "This will only strengthen the extreme left and others to promote the process of surrender at a much quicker pace," Landau said on Israel Radio.

Landau said administrative detentions could only be carried out if security forces had "some concrete and specific information."

More than 50,000 Jewish and Christian visitors have peacefully toured the ancient compound, which is Judaism's holiest site, since its reopening to non-Muslim visitors a year ago.

Likud MK Ehud Yatom said Sunday that the Jewish Underground group was "extremely close" to succeeding in their 1984 plan to bomb the Mosques on the Temple Mount. Yatom was one of the Shin Bet commanders who conducted the operation to stop the attacks and arrest the extremists.

Yatom told Army Radio, "We were very close, extremely close, to a serious terrorist bombing, as members of the Underground planted five bombs in five buses, which were then to convey innocent civilians and tourists.

"We were extremely close to truly distorted, wicked people succeeding in striking a place very sacred to Muslims on the Temple Mount."

Twenty-nine Israelis were then arrested by police on suspicion of belonging to the Jewish Underground which planned a series of attacks against Arabs, with 27 of them later indicted on various terror-related charges.

During their trial, it emerged that one of their plans was to blow up al-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount. The men involved in the conspiracy were sentenced to prison terms ranging from four months to 10 years. Most were freed early after being pardoned by then-president Chaim Herzog. Yehuda Etzion, one of the leaders of the Jewish underground movement said that an attack on the Temple Mount and the destruction of the Dome of the Rock is "a worthy goal," although not the desired way to stop the disengagement plan, Army Radio reported.

Six months ago, the head of the Shin Bet Avi Dichter outlined the potential danger from Jewish terrorists. Likely to intensify should Israel start uprooting settlements, Dichter said their dream to remove the 'abomination' - the mosques - from the Temple Mount "should trouble us greatly."

"For the State of Israel and the Jewish people in the Diaspora, Jewish terrorism is liable to create a substantial strategic threat and to turn the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into a confrontation between 13 million Jews and 1 billion Muslims across the world," Dichter said at the Herzliya Conference.

Etzion: I would not be suprised if an attack is being planned.

Yehuda Etzion, one of the activists convicted of plotting to destroy the mosques on the temple mount, agreed to be interviewed Sunday by Israel Radio.

He shied away from answering directly as to whether or not he would do it again or still believes it should be done, saying only that he no longer believes that blowing up the temple mount is the first thing that needs to be done in the chain of events to lead up to the building of the third temple, without elaborating on what this chain does consist of.

When asked what had gone wrong in his plan, he answered, "There were many people in the picture, but not enough people at the grassroots level who were actually ready to do the act." He later denied knowledge of any current plans against the mosques, saying only that he wouldn't be surprised if after "37 years of the mount being in our hands and not in our hands, it crossed somebody's mind."

"The current situation needs to be changed," he said. When asked who needs to change it he answered. "Am Yisrael - the people of Israel."

"If you had told a Jew in exile that someday the Jews would return to Israel, and its soldiers would liberate the Temple Mount, but Jews would allow the mosque to remain, yet still pray every day at the wall, "If I forget you, o Jerusalem let my right hand forget its usefulness," I don't think he would have believed you."

He stressed that the desire to return to the temple mount is not simply a desire to 'be there,' or to 'have it,' rather a recognition of the need to restore Israel "from the mundane to the holy.

Etzion conceded that blowing up the Temple Mount would most likely not be looked favorable upon by the Arab world, though he implied that it would be looked at as a sign of strength, rather than weakness, a trait he said Israel was exuding by allowing the mosques to remain.

Noam Federman, speaking to Israel Radio from his Hebron home while under house arrest, said, "I look at the Temple Mount as the holiest place in Israel, where the Temple belongs, and without any interference from the political schemes of Ariel Sharon one day the third temple will be built there, and there wont be any more mosques."