Al-Aqsa under mortal threat

It seems, at first blush, unconscionable to be writing today about Palestine in the midst of the refugee calamity, which so far this year involved half a million lost souls — with hundreds of thousands poised to follow — trying to reach safe havens in Europe, a calamity that has caused havoc in the continent, dissension among the European leaders about how to handle the crisis, and a display of xenophobic zeal by the continent’s bigots, including Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who vehemently denounce what they see as an “Islamic invasion.”
The scenes are reminiscent of the Great Migration in the US between 1910 and the middle of the 20th century, the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural southern states to the urban northeast; the Displaced Persons (DPs) camps in Europe, established by the Allies across Austria, Italy and Germany following the conclusion of World War II, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe; and the population transfer between India and Pakistan in the wake of the subcontinent’s partition that resulted in the displacement of 14 million people — the largest mass migration in history.
So how could events in Palestine trump the refugee calamity in Europe today? I’ll let you decide.
We all know that the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem, dominated by the architecturally exquisite Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-roofed Dome of the Rock — an iconic symbol of the city — is of paramount significance to Muslims everywhere. It is, after all, the site from which our Prophet (peace be upon him) ascended to heavens on his Night Journey, as revealed in one of the chapters of the Qur’an known as Al-Isra.
Though in the past, successive Israeli governments had set their sights on the sanctuary, the current one makes no bones about its plans to take it over. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, made of extremist right-wingers and a constituency of messianic Jews, is embarking on a sinister, not to mention sneaky, project to take full control of the grounds. How so? Begin progressively by allowing Jews to “pray” there and when that does not meet serious challenges by the world, assert these Jews’ “right” to build a permanent presence there, follow that by a complete takeover and then finally lead from there to the sanctuary’s destruction.
Unlikely? Far fetched? Not really. In recent days, Israelis who hail from various colonies in the West Bank have been allowed, according to news reports, to enter Al-Aqsa (in Arabic, “the farthest mosque”) and roam around freely under police protection. What other “rights” will they be given next? And who is there to stop them?
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) appears to be more preoccupied with raising the Palestinian flag outside the United Nations headquarters in New York, where the group’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, is slated to deliver his presentation to the annual meeting of heads of state at the General Assembly on Sept. 30, than it is, sadly, with protecting The Noble Sanctuary. With its role reduced by Israel to that of a passive observer of events in Palestine, the PNA finds itself helpless at confronting the schemes of the occupation authorities on that issue.
Moreover, the site at which the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock stand has been since 1948 legally administered by Jordan, whose king last Monday “warned” Israel in a statement that his country was “very concerned and angered with the recent escalation in Jerusalem” and that “further provocations” will prompt the Jordanian government to “take action.”
It is doubtful, you will agree, that Israeli officialdom, which often snubbed warnings even from the White House, will be swayed by threats, let alone entreaties, from Amman.
Every Muslim should be concerned about the potential destruction of our third holiest site. Lest we forget, Israel came close to doing just that on Aug. 21, 1969, when an Australian fanatic, with close ties to neo-fascist and messianic Jews in Israel, set fire to the pulpit at the mosque in his and his associates’ effort to destroy the whole edifice and ultimately have “Solomon’s Temple restored on the Mount.”
It may also be recalled that the incident so enraged — and later galvanized — the entire Muslim world that a month later a three-day Islamic summit conference was held in Rabat to “deal with the issue of Jerusalem,” which in turn was followed by two meetings in Jeddah of foreign ministers from the Islamic countries in March 1970 and in Karachi in December of the same year. From all that emerged the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), we need an equally muscular response today.
I care more — and not altogether shamefacedly — about the fate of Jerusalem than I do about the fate of asylum seekers knocking on the doors of affluent EU countries. I certainly care more about it than I do about seeing the Palestinian flag fluttering in the wind outside UN headquarters in New York.