Former head of Israel's internal security (Shin Bet) Carmi Gilon and former police commissioner Assaf Hefetz sent a public letter to Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Friday, warning about security threats to al-Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), posed by extremist, Jewish settlers and messianic groups, reported Haaretz newspaper.
"Calls made by rabbis," Gilon and Hefetz wrote, "are liable to be interpreted as sanctions given to an attack against the Temple Mount [by Jewish groups]." Rabbinical exhortations to "destroy the mosques and take vengeance for the murder of Binyamin Kahane," they added, make the Islamic sites on the Mount "prime targets for attacks by Jews."
Kahane and his wife were killed last week in a shoot-out attack on the road between Jerusalem and Ramallah.
His death triggered wide-scale demonstrations in Israel, and Barak was sharply attacked by the country's rabbis who accused him of leniency with the Palestinians in dealing with such attacks.
The Gilon and Hefetz statement was sponsored by the Keshev Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel, which was established after the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, said the paper.
To supplement the Gilon-Hefetz letter, the association added a report on the activities of extremist 'Temple Mount' groups in recent years.
According to the report's findings, tens of thousands of people have been active in such groups. Though activities and ideologies supported by these groups differ, they are united by a commitment toward the eventual establishment of the Third Temple at sites on the Mount where the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine stand today, said Haaretz.
"Many of the members of these groups," the report adds, "have records of conviction for violent, ultra-nationalist activity; these include Kach [Kahane-affiliated group] members, and members of the Jewish underground."
In his letter, Keshey director, Yizhar Be'er, declared: "In the event of an attack against the holy sites, responsibility will be accorded to Israel, and destructive forces with apocalyptic-type intensity could arise." -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
