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<h1 class="page__title title balance-text" id="page-title">Destruction
of al-Aqsa is no conspiracy theory</h1>
<header class="node__header">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ilan-pappe"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Ilan Pappe</a></span> <br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/destruction-al-aqsa-no-conspiracy-theory/14991">https://electronicintifada.net/content/destruction-al-aqsa-no-conspiracy-theory/14991</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-11-10T15:43:00+00:00">10
November 2015</span></span> </p>
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<p>“It is useless,” asserts the colonizer in Albert Memmi’s
classical tract, <em><a
href="https://books.google.be/books?id=ee1TEf25qicC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Colonizer+and+the+Colonized&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Colonizer%20and%20the%20Colonized&f=false">The
Colonizer and the Colonized</a></em>, “to try and forecast the
colonized’s actions (‘they are unpredictable! ‘With them, you
never know!).” It seems to the colonizer that “strange and
disturbing impulsiveness controls the colonized.”</p>
<p>The only explanation official Israel and its supporters could
give for why Palestinians have risen up lately is that they were
influenced by Islamic propaganda. That propaganda so easily
incited the “impulsive and unpredictable” Palestinians in recent
weeks, according to Israeli spin.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, Western commentators have been more willing
to place the resistance in the wider context of the oppression
faced by Palestinians.</p>
<p>Yet this Western approach, articulated mainly by liberal
academics and journalists, has something in common with the
Israeli one: it regards as baseless and irrelevant the allegations
that Israel plans to demolish <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/al-aqsa-mosque">al-Aqsa
mosque</a> in Jerusalem or build a “<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/third-temple">Third
Temple</a>” on the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/haram-al-sharif">Haram
al-Sharif</a>, the surrounding compound. The allegations appear
in the western media as a mere pretext which have only
incidentally triggered Palestinians to rise up.</p>
<p>There is no denying that after nearly 50 years of brutal
colonization one does not have to look too far to understand the
depths of despair and levels of rage felt by Palestinians.</p>
<p>However, this understandable impulse to act against oppression
should not lead us to ignore Israel’s plans towards Haram
al-Sharif. Nor should we accept that Arab and Palestinian
apprehensions about Israel are figments of the oriental
imagination and not rooted in reality. In fact, they can be
substantiated.</p>
<p>It is, therefore, crucial to ask, whether you are religious or
secular: is al-Aqsa in danger? If it is, then its precarious
future is not just an offense to Islam but also a further
indication of how far Israel’s settler-colonial project could go.</p>
<h2>Archaeological crime</h2>
<p>Demolishing Arab and Islamic sites in Jerusalem is not unknown in
Israeli policy and attitudes. In 1967, Israel <a
href="http://www.palestine-studies.org/jq/fulltext/78159">razed</a>
the Moroccan Quarter in the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/old-city-jerusalem">Old
City of Jerusalem</a>.</p>
<p>This was an architectural gem of Islamic civilization dating back
to the late 12th century and had hosted some of the most important
Islamic religious orders.</p>
<p>When <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/zionism">Zionism</a>
appeared in Palestine, its leaders were not only trying to
purchase land for settlement but also to buy what they considered
to be Jewish Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Baron Edmond Rothschild <a
href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zhdp9btWGWQC&pg=PP10&lpg=PP10&dq=ISBN+0-87306-879-3.&source=bl&ots=k1M_Dy2Zee&sig=6cz83Jjiugjav-Sr4tZsKnG_kA8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAGoVChMI4eW9_uqDyQIVCNYeCh0S9QHX#v=onepage&q=Rothschild&f=false">attempted</a>
to buy the quarter at the end of the 19th century, as did the
Zionist leadership under the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/british-mandate">British
Mandate</a> — to no avail. When purchasing did not work, it was
taken by force during the 1967 War and demolished.</p>
<p>The demolition included the destruction of the Sheikh Eid mosque
built by a son of Salah al-Din al-Ayubi, who liberated Jerusalem
from the Crusaders. When learning about the destruction years
later, Benjamin Kedar, a historian and vice president of the
Israeli National Academy of Sciences, <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/rare-photograph-reveals-ancient-jerusalem-mosque-destroyed-in-1967.premium-1.436593">declared</a>
to the Israeli newspaper <em>Haaretz</em> that “it was an
archaeological crime.”</p>
<p>The destruction of mosques was not a new practice, or one limited
to Jerusalem. Zionist forces left intact only very few mosques in
the destroyed Palestinian villages and towns during the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba">Nakba</a> —
the <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing">ethnic
cleansing</a> operation of 1948. The Israeli authorities then
turned many of the remaining mosques into clubs, restaurants and
animal enclosures.</p>
<h2>Geography of destruction</h2>
<p>Thus, neither historical monuments in Jerusalem nor mosques
around Palestine were immune from the destructive policies of the
colonizer. This ruination of the country’s Islamic heritage is
deeply engraved in the Palestinian collective memory.</p>
<p>Palestinians also freqeuently witness Israel destroying buildings
with armored D-9 bulldozers, supplied by the US firm <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/caterpillar">Caterpillar</a>.</p>
<p>However, it is not only this vivid memory of the Israeli
geography of destruction that plants fears among many about the
future of al-Aqsa. It is a realistic analysis of the ideology of
some of the potent political forces today in Israel, who are
represented in <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/benjamin-netanyahu">Benjamin
Netanyahu’s</a> current government.</p>
<p>The most important of them is the ever-growing religious
nationalist movement. It used to be a marginal force, but today
it is part of the establishment.</p>
<p>As Or Kashti of <em>Haaretz</em> <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.683333">revealed</a>
recently, part of the curriculum of that movement’s school system
(Israel runs three systems: a secular Jewish one, a national
religious one and the “Arab” system) is a program that advocates
the building of the “Third Temple.”</p>
<p>Building the temple is the ambition of humanity as a whole,
pupils are told. Kashti talked to experts who read the program and
although he stresses that the program does not have a direct
reference to blowing up al-Aqsa, the pupils are inoculated with
the idea that they are on the verge of the Jewish redemption (<em>Geula</em>)
of the mount.</p>
<p>This program is supported by <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/naftali-bennett">Naftali
Bennet</a>, the education minister. Along with his colleague, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/uri-ariel">Uri Ariel</a>,
Bennett is part of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/habayit-hayehudi">Jewish
Home</a> party, which is committed to replacing al-Aqsa with a
Jewish temple.</p>
<p>Following the election earlier this year, Ariel was appointed
agriculture minister. In his previous role as housing minister, he
<a
href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/minister-calls-for-third-temple-to-be-built/">called</a>
explicitly to build the new temple over al-Aqsa. He is not a
marginal politician, and neither is his party.</p>
<p>The Israeli government <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Report-State-funds-groups-that-advocate-building-Third-Temple-321990">supports</a>
with money and other means several organizations that call openly
for a similar plan. The most important of them is The Temple
Institute in Jerusalem, founded by <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yisrael-ariel">Rabbi
Yisrael Ariel</a>. Its funding has been <a
href="http://www.haaretz.co.il/misc/1.1182476">investigated</a>
by the <em>Haaretz</em> reporter Uri Blau.</p>
<p>The institute’s main goal, <a
href="https://www.templeinstitute.org">according to its website</a>,
is “to see Israel rebuild the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah in
Jerusalem [al-Aqsa mosque compound], in accordance with the
Biblical commandments.”</p>
<p>There is nothing ludicrous or unimaginable in assuming that a
zealot Zionist will one day carry out such plans.</p>
<p><em>The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of
history and director of the European Centre for Palestine
Studies at the University of Exeter.</em></p>
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