Israel's Ariel Sharon and Lebanon's Sabra/Shatila Massacre

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Minister of Defense Sharon (right) with his US counterpart Caspar Weinberger, 1982

Then-Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon, foreground, rides an armored personnel carrier on a tour of Israeli units advancing to the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon, June 15, 1982. (AP Photo)

Sabra and Shatila massacre: What happened in Lebanon in 1982?

The Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia was responsible for the massacres that occurred at the two Beirut-area refugee camps on September 16-17, 1982. Israeli troops allowed the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila to root out terrorist cells believed located there. It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition.

It  was thought that Israeli-backed Phalange militia killed between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians in two days.  Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp, and the adjacent neighbourhood of Sabra are located SW of Lebanon’s capital city,  Beirut, but the numbers were all wrong.   

As the civil war of Lebanon unfolded, Israel and the PLO had been exchanging attacks since the early 1970s until early 1980s.

From 1975 to 1990, groups in competing alliances with neighboring countries fought against each other in the Lebanese Civil War.

 Infighting and massacres between these groups claimed several thousand victims. Examples: the Syrian-backed Karantina massacre (January 1976) by the Kataeb and its allies against Kurds, Syrians and Palestinians in the predominantly Muslim slum district of Beirut; Damour (January 1976). 

Also by the PLO against Christian Maronites, including the family and fiancée of the Lebanese Forces intelligence chief Elie Hobeika; and Tel al-Zaatar (August 1976) by Phalangists and their allies against Palestinian refugees living in a camp administered by UNRWA. The total death toll in Lebanon for the whole civil war period was around 150,000 victims.

By June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the intention of rooting out the PLO. 

By 30 August 1982, under the supervision of the Multinational Force, the PLO withdrew from Lebanon following weeks of battles in West Beirut  shortly before the massacre took place.

 Lebanese politician Elie Hobeika, whose family and fiancée had been murdered by Palestinian militants and left-wing Lebanese militias during the Damour massacre in 1976, itself a response to the Karantina massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese Shias at the hands of Christian militias was in command.

IDF chief of staff, Raphael Eitan (11 January 1929 – 23 November 2004) age 53 then, was an Israeli general, former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (Ramatkal) and later a politician, a Knesset member, and government minister.  Rafael Eitan was born Rafael Kaminsky in the moshav of Tel Adashim near Nazareth in 1929, to Eliyahu and Miriam Eitan, Ukrainian Jewish immigrants to Palestine. His father was one of the founders of the Jewish defense organization Hashomer.

On the night of 14/15 September 1982 the IDF chief of staff, Raphael Eitan, flew to Beirut where he went straight to the Phalangists' headquarters and instructed their leadership to order a general mobilization of their forces and prepare to take part in the forthcoming Israeli attack on West Beirut.

On the evening of 14 September, following the news that Bachir Gemayel had been assassinated, Prime Minister Begin, Defense Minister Sharon and Chief of Staff Eitan agreed that the Israeli army should invade West Beirut.

 The public reason given was to be that they were there to prevent chaos. In a separate conversation, at 20:30 that evening, Sharon and Eitan agreed that the IDF should not enter the Palestinian refugee camps but that the Phalange should be used. The only other member of the cabinet who was consulted was Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir.   

On morning of Wednesday 15 September Israeli Defence Minister, Sharon, who had also travelled to Beirut, held a meeting with Eitan and others at the IDF's forward command post, on the roof of a five-story building 200 meters SW of Shatila camp.  It was agreed that the Phalange should go into the camps.

The Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia did the killings which were perpetrated to avenge the murders of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel and 25 of his followers, killed in a bomb attack earlier that week.

Shortly after 6.00 am 15 September, the Israeli army entered West Beirut, This Israeli action breached its agreement with the United States not to occupy West Beirut and was in violation of the ceasefire.

When Israeli soldiers ordered the Phalangists out, they found hundreds dead (estimates range from 460 according to the Lebanese police, to 700-800 calculated by Israeli intelligence). The dead, according to the Lebanese account, included 35 women and children. The rest were men: Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians, and Algerians. The killings came on top of an estimated 95,000 deaths that had occurred during the civil war in Lebanon from 1975-1982.

Israel had allowed the Phalange to enter the camps as part of a plan to transfer authority to the Lebanese, and accepted responsibility for that decision. The Kahan Commission of Inquiry, formed by the Israeli government in response to public outrage and grief, found that Israel was indirectly responsible for not anticipating the possibility of Phalangist violence. Israel instituted the panel’s recommendations, including the dismissal of Gen. Raful Eitan, the Army Chief of Staff. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon resigned on February 8, 1983.

Shatila had previously been one of the PLO's three main training camps for foreign fighters and the main training camp for European fighters. The Israelis maintained that 2,000 to 3,000 terrorists remained in the camps, but were unwilling to risk the lives of more of their soldiers after the Lebanese army repeatedly refused to "clear them out." No evidence was offered for this claim. There were only a small number of forces sent into the camps and they suffered minimal casualties. Two Phalangists were wounded, one in the leg and another in the hand.

 Investigations after the massacre found few weapons in the camps. Thomas Friedman, who entered the camps on Saturday, mostly found groups of young men with their hands and feet bound, who had been then lined up and machine-gunned down gang-land style, not typical he thought of the kind of deaths the reported 2,000 terrorists in the camp would have put up with.

Of course, the Hezbollah, represented by aljazeerea most likely, paints a picture that may not be as true as they write.  It was a bad massacre, all right but Sharon got the most blame for it as I remember.  The Christian Lebanese were furious at the time and more violent than Sharon could have guessed.  It turned out to be NOT a shooting but really getting even!  Two of the Christian Presidents had been assassinated !  They were of the same family line of Gemayel, like a royal line.  

By contrast, few voices were raised in May 1985, when Muslim militiamen attacked the Shatila and Burj-el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camps. According to UN officials, 635 were killed and 2,500 wounded. 

During a two-year battle between the Syrian-backed Shiite Amal militia and the PLO, more than 2,000, including many civilians, were reportedly killed. No outcry was directed at the PLO or the Syrians and their allies over the slaughter. International reaction was also muted in October 1990 when Syrian forces overran Christian-controlled areas of Lebanon. In the eight-hour clash, 700 Christians were killed – the worst single battle of Lebanon’s Civil War.

Resource:

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/massacres-at-sabra-and-shatila

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/16/sabra-and-shatila-massacre-40-years-on-explainer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Eitan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Sharon

https://www.timesofisrael.com/journalist-reckons-with-israeli-blame-for-1982-sabra-and-shatila-massacre/

Ariel Sharon's 180 degree turn from Likud to a Labor Attitude

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

    1967's Six Day War that Altered Where History Was Heading 

Born Ariel Scheinermann, אֲרִיאֵל שַׁיינֶרְמָן‎; 26 February 1928 – 11 January 2014) Ariel Sharon was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006. He's so old, that he had served in the Haganah!  Sharon's unit of the Haganah became engaged in serious and continuous combat from the autumn of 1947, with the onset of the Battle for Jerusalem.  So Sharon had been fighting for Israel since before it was a state and continued until his heart attack in 2014.  From age 19 till he died at 86, , he fought to create Israel.                          

Born 17 years later than Sharon, Moshe Katsav was presidentduring this period.  Moshe Katsav (Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה קַצָּב; born 5 December 1945) is an Israeli former politician who was the eighth President of Israel from 2000 to 2007. He was also a leading Likud member of the Israeli Knesset and a minister in its cabinet. He was the second Mizrahi Jew to be elected to presidency, after Yitzhak Navon. 

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had to repeat his support for a Palestinian State.  Who believed him?  He had received bitter criticism from his own party, Likud, on this new stance.  

He came up with 3  conditions for Israel's recognition of Palestine:  1. that it be demilitarized, 2, established by agreement with Israel, and 3. have borders consistent with Israel's security.  

A poll was taken and found that 47% oppose the formation of a Palestinian state regardless of them honoring a peace agreement or not.  34% supported a Palestinian state only on condition the Palestinians fulfill a peace agreement.  65% of Israelis believed that a Palestinian state of any kind would be a threat to Israel.  Most Israelis seem not to trust the Palestinians to uphold agreements, and therefore would oppose a Palestinian state. 

Sharon said that he is the Palestinian's best hope for a "Nixon going to China" scenario:  the seeming paradox that right-wingers end up making peace agreements while left-wingers find themselves going to war.  "I believe the Palestinians are missing out on an exceptional opportunity."   Sharon claimed that he was "one of the few who could broker a deal."  

It was on the eve of his planned US visit that Sharon sounded particularly conciliatory.  The Palestinians should take this side of Sharon seriously, even if some Israelis did not.  

Previously,  Sharon was witness to the Sabra & Shatila Massacre in Lebanon, and was blamed for its happening, so he had then developed a reputation for being a very tough and bloody guy.  What had occurred was the killing of  between 460 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites—by the militia of the Lebanese Forces. The group was a Maronite Christian Lebanese right-wing party under the command of Elie Hobeika. It committed the atrocity in the Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp, in Beirut. He evidently had been an observer of what his Lebanese friends had done but did not stop them.   

"The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) had the camp surrounded. The militia had been ordered by the IDF to clear Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters out of Sabra and Shatila, as part of the IDF's maneuvering into West Beirut. As the massacre unfolded, the IDF received reports of atrocities but did not take any action to prevent or stop the massacre."   I believe that if they did, the IDF would wind up fightingagainst their Lebanese co-partners and they couldn't do that.  Israel has prided themselves to never do such things, and probably didn't expect this from their Lebanese friends.  

Sharon's initiatives in the 1982 Lebanon War and the following condemnation of his actions by a commission of inquiry led him to resign from this post in 1983, but he remained in the cabinet, without portfolio.  A hardliner on relations with the Arabs, he took a leading part in settling Judea and Samaria. 

    Sharon praying at the Wall on Temple Mount in 2000.   Outbreaks of violence began in September 2000, after Ariel Sharon, then the Israeli opposition leader, made a provocative visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; The visit itself was peaceful, but, as anticipated, sparked protests and riots that Israeli police put down with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister who died 14 years later on a Saturday at age 85, made a name for himself as a military and political leader who put Israel’s security above all else. It was a position that earned the controversial figure the nickname “the bulldozer” as a fearless leader who got things done.To many Israelis, he was a hero. To some in the Arab world, he was a killer. 

Here are five things to know about Sharon:

1. Some saw him as a war hero:

Sharon, top second from left, with members of Unit 101 after Operation Egged (November 1955). Standing l to r: Lt. Meir Har-Zion, Maj. Arik Sharon, Lt. Gen Moshe Dayan, Capt. Dani Matt, Lt. Moshe Efron, Maj. Gen Asaf Simchoni; on ground, l to r: Capt. Aharon Davidi, Lt. Ya'akov Ya'akov, Capt. Raful Eitan

Sharon, who rose through the ranks of the Israeli Defense Forces, first gained hero status among Israelis during the 1967 Six Day War that saw Israel attack Egypt, Jordan and Syria to counter what they saw as an impending attack by the Arab nations.

Under Sharon’s command, Israeli troops routed Egyptian forces during a nighttime battle to capture Um Cataf, a crucial crossroads in the Sinai. That victory is considered a major factor in Egypt’s loss of the Sinai to Israel.

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Sharon earned the nickname “The Lion of God” among Israelis for surrounding Egypt’s Third Army and, defying orders, leading 200 tanks and 5,000 men across the Suez Canal – roughly 100 miles from Cairo.

A cunning and unforgiving general who went on to hold nearly every top government post, including prime minister at the time he was struck ill, Mr. Sharon spent his final years in what doctors defined as a state of minimal consciousness in a sterile suite at the hospital, Sheba Medical Center. Visits were restricted for fear of infection.Prof. Shlomo Nov of the medical center said heart failure was the direct cause of death, resulting from organ deterioration. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the nation bowed its head to a man he described as “first and foremost a brave soldier and an outstanding military commander” who “had a central role in the battle for Israel’s security from the very beginning.”

  Bachir Gemayel born November 10, 1947, elected president in 1982;  assassinated on 23rd August 1982. He was 34 years 9 months and 13 days old when he died.  He was elected president on 23 August 1982, but he was assassinated before taking office on 14 September, via a bomb explosion by Habib Shartouni, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. Gemayel is described as the most controversial figure in the history of Lebanon.

          Sabra & Shatila Massacre: August 25, 1982

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Defense Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, met with Gemayel months earlier, telling him that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) were planning an invasion to uproot the PLO threat to Israel and to move them out of Lebanon. While Gemayel did not control Israel's actions in Lebanon, the support Israel gave the Lebanese Forces, militarily and politically, angered many Lebanese leftists. 

Gemal was fighting against the PLO as well.

In February 1983, a commission chaired by Seán MacBride, the assistant to the UN Secretary General and President of United Nations General Assembly at the time, looking into reported violations of International Law by Israel concluded that Israel, as the camp's occupying power, bore responsibility for the violence. The commission also concluded that the massacre was a form of genocide.    

 President Bachir Gemayel had been assassinated two days earlier and the Phalangists sought revenge.  Israel’s Maronite Christian allies, the Phalange Party, contrary to Sharon’s expectations, did not act to secure the city as they had been expected to do, and a dangerous stalemate ensued. The pro-Israel Haig was forced from office, as a bewildered and angry Reagan, reinforced by U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar…Weinberger, sought an Israeli withdrawal. Habib, working under the direction of Haig’s successor, George Shultz, managed to insert a multinational peacekeeping force in Lebanon that allowed Arafat and a portion of his force to evacuate Beirut in August, following a final Israeli bombardment.

How Israel was involved was that In June 1982, the IDF had invaded Lebanon with the intention of rooting out the PLO. By 30 August 1982, under the supervision of the Multinational Force, the PLO withdrew from Lebanon following weeks of battles in West Beirut and shortly before the massacre took place. Various forces — Israeli, Lebanese Forces and possibly also the South Lebanon Army (SLA) — were in the vicinity of Sabra and Shatila at the time of the slaughter.                          

16 years later, Sharon and Yitzhak Mordechai greeting United States President Bill Clinton in 1998.  

Ariel Sharon criticised the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 as an act of "brutal interventionism". Sharon said both Serbia and Kosovo have been victims of violence. He said prior to the current Yugoslav campaign against Kosovo Albanians, Serbians were the targets of attacks in the Kosovo province. "Israel has a clear policy. We are against aggressive actions. We are against hurting innocent people. I hope that the sides will return to the negotiating table as soon as possible."

Did Ariel Sharon realize that Israel is different from the Phalange by their code of conduct that the Arabs had never had in their culture?  Did he have that feeling of understanding why they had committed such a massacre?  That he would have wanted to do the same things but his code of conduct as a Jew prevented him to do such things?  Perhaps that's why he changed and decided to accept a Palestine.  

Resource: Book:  Confronting Jihad:  Israel's struggle and the World After 9/11; page 104-Sharon's New Tone (11/30/2001)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada#:~:text=Outbreaks%20of%20violence%20began%20in,rubber%20bullets%20and%20tear%20gas.

https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/11/world/meast/ariel-sharon-5-things/index.html

https://www.britannica.com/place/Israel/War-in-Lebanon#ref741847

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachir_Gemayel#:~:text=He%20was%20elected%20president%20on,in%20the%20history%20of%20Lebanon.

Revelation At UN on September 8, 2000- the Millennium Year

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

President Clinton-born 8/19/1946;  with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak-born 2/12/1942;   left, and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat-born 8/1929-died 11/11/2004 at the Camp David during peace talks, July 11, 2000.  Ehud Barak was an Israeli general and politician who served as the tenth prime minister from 1999 to 2001. He was leader of the Labor Party until January 2011.  Barak was replaced by Ariel Sharon from 2002 to 2006, a commander in the Israeli army since 1948.  He was a member of the Likud Party.  

                    A millennium meeting in 2000 of the UN.  

It was September 8, 2000.  150 world leaders attended the United Nations for the largest summit meeting ever held.  The Middle East as the main topic was the draw for so many.  The center of the topic was the Temple Mount, a small area no bigger than a few football fields.  The question was:  who had control over the Temple Mount? It had come back into Israeli hands at the conclusion of the Six Day War of 1967.  From 1948 to 67, Jews had not been able to enter.  

                                                 

      Israeli paratroopers seeing wall for 1st time at end of war

                                                    

The custom is to put a slip of paper with a prayer/hope in the crack

The Western Wall or Kotel is the only place where Jews are allowed to pray.  It's the Muslim religious group in Jordan who rules the roost here.    This is part of Herod's wall that enclosed the Temple that still stood in the Old city of Jerusalem.  The 5 lower courses, each over 3 feet high, date from the time of Herod;  the wall continues over 60 feet underground.  Because of its proximity to the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple, where only the high priest was allowed,  at the West end of the Temple, this part of the wall was regarded as sacred in popular legend as far back as the 10th century.  And the UN thought they were going to dictate who ruled over the wall!!!

Jews were kept from the wall and the Temple Mount from 1948 to the end of the 1967 War.  The fact that they won the war gave them the right to enter Jerusalem here and view the wall.  On Shavuot 1967, the 1st day the Wall could be visited b the public, 200,000 people went there, and since then it has been a focal point for Jewish tourists from all parts of the world.  

There were 3 proposals for this religious center to parcel sovereignty over it that once held Solomon's Temple.    One was to have someone over the outer wall;  one for the building sitting on the outer wall, and the 3rd was over the country-yard in between.  

They ignored the fact that it was the  chief site for Judaism, both his 1st and 2nd Temple as the 1st was attacked by the Assyrians in 721 BCE, and rebuilt after the Babylonian attacks happening in 597 BCE and then again in 586 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar and rebuilt in 538 BCE by the returning captives.  Then the Romans attacked and burned down the 2nd Temple in 70 CE, and place a Roman Temple in its place which later was destroyed and replaced by a Moslem Temple.  

Barak was the 1st Israeli leader to acknowledge Palestinian ties to Jerusalem, which was a very new tie with the mosque now sitting on the Temple Mount. Many thought this was an unwarrented giveaway and that it wouldn't soften Arafat up at all, but only show weakness.   Barak declared that the city was sacred to Moslems and Christians and cherished by their Palestinian neighbors, and that a true peace would reflect all these bonds. He appeased people for the moment, never carrying through with such a promise.    So far, the Palestinians had shown no peace, and had only been attacking the Jews.  When Israel goes overboard, the Palestinians have only hardened their hearts and never have gone along with anything like  peace with the Jews.  They took the oath of the 3 NO's in Africa's Kartoum meeting, and haven't changed their minds.                                   

Arafat spoke. saying that Jerusalem was the cradle of Christianity and the site of Prophet Mohammed's ascension to heaven.  Then he  omitted any Jewish connection to the city on purpose.  Now the city was again in Jewish hands.  The 1967 Six Day War's outcome was that Israel had won against all the surrounding states that had attacked her.  Besides ignoring the fact that Israel had now gained back the land and it was in their hands again, he accused Israel of "attempts to Judaize Jerusalem!"  Of course it's a Jewish city.  What else?  

The Muslims have  48 Muslim majority states.  Jews have just gained back their one and only state of Israel after waiting over 2,000 years for it to be theirs again.  

    Days of Jerusalem with the 1st Temple of Solomon, built through the period of 961-920 BCE, about 3,000 years ago on the Temple Mount.  After the Assyrians attacked it, the Temple was re-furbished by returning Babylonian Jews who were given the okay to rebuild by the King of Persia, of course on the Temple Mount.  Herod the Great (73 BCE-4BCE), a miserable example of a human, did do one thing right, and that was to rebuild the Temple once again.  He was appointed king over Judea by the Roman senate.  So he captured Jerusalem in 37 with the help of the Roman forces and then married the daughter of the Jewish high priest, Hyrcanus.  he rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount on a magnificent scale and erected the 2 new cities of Sebaste and Caeserea.  Outside of Judea, he had a great reputation  of the generous patron, spokesman and protector of Jews.  Herod ruled Judea from 37 BCE. The Bible says he initiated a murder of all the infants in Bethlehem in an attempt to get rid of the baby Jesus.

  This is exactly what happened when Moses was born.  Baby 

boys were being killed.  Rashi to Exodus (1:16) quotes a Midrash that the Pharaoh decreed to specifically kill males since his astrologers predicted that a male would save the Jews. This Midrash is pretty old, and is present in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (2:9:2). Exodus 1:15-22) The oversupply of boys might join their enemies and fight against them.  So instead of realizing that the boys would grow into men and become his fighting force, Jews and Egyptians, he wanted all boys killed,, period.  

Jerusalem had been the capital of Israel from the days of King David who had ruled over Israel from  1010 BCE to 970 BCE, a period of 40 years.  It remained with the Davidic dynasty when Solomon, his son, was the king.  from 961 to 920 BCE.  Jeroboam was then king with Jerusalem becoming the capital of Judah. The Dynasty continued on with Solomon's son, Rehoboam as king from 933-917 BCE.  David's House continued to rule till Zedekiah was king from 597-586 BCE.  The House of David ruled from Jerusalem from 1010-586 BCE-a period of 424 years!  Then the Jews returned from Babylon where they had been taken captives in 538 BCE and continued ruling until Jerusalem was burned down by the Romans in 70 CE.  That was another 608 years, totaling 1,032 years of ruling from Jerusalem under Jewish rule, and he makes a ridiculous statement like that!  It's enough to curdle my blood.  

A book has been written, called the Torah, the 5 Books of Moses.  The Tanakh or Old Testament has continued the history.  Psalms were written by David.  The whole world of Christians has been at least exposed to our history.  How can Arafat deny us?

Of course he knows our history, but for publication, he, like a lawyer, has set the scene of denial, and knows that if he says it enough times, people will believe him.  He's the big shot in his world, and people will do what he says. 

Anyone who tries to take Jerusalem away from the Jews is asking for trouble.  It's always been the Jewish capital.  So many Jewish souls fought for it.  Jewish blood has colored the soil.  No one has held it for any length of time and made it blossom except the Jews.  Jerusalem has always been regarded as the spiritual center of Judaism.                                  

It was in 638, the city fell to the caliph Omar who set up a place of prayer in the Temple esplanade;  this was magnificently rebuilt in 691 as the Dome of the Rock by the Umayyad caliph Abd-el Malik.  Under Arab rule, the Jews were allowed to return, but the city began to decay after the transfer of the center of Abbasid rule to Baghdad in 750.  The Fatimids in the 11th century built the 2nd principal mosque, El-Aksa, on the Temple site.  In 1099, Jerusalem was stormed by the Crusaders under Godfrey of Bouillon;  they established it as a capital of the Latin Kingdom.  In 1187, the Ayyubid sultan Saladin retook the city for Islam and it remained in Moslem hands, except for a few years in the middle of the 13th century, despite all Christian efforts in successive crusades.  In each Crusade from first to last, they have slaughtered both Jewish men and women, even entering their homes., not very "Christian" of them.                                 

Over the past 50 some years, Israel has bent over backwards to give the Islamic authorities (Wakf) control over the Temple Mount which has actually taken away the rights of Jewish citizens to pray there.  The Islamic Wakf  of Jordan arrest anyone Jewish they see moving their lips in prayer!  We see the results with Arabs, mostly teens harassing and attacking Jews in mob hysteria periodically.  The Palestinians need to recognize the Jewish connection to ancient Jerusalem and accept the moral and historic right of Israel to exist in this land.  The Abrahamic Accords is leading the way in this, hopefully.  

Resource:

Confronting JIHAD, Israel's struggle & the world after 9/11 by Saul Singer, columnist at the Jerusalem Post.