What's happening in Jerusalem is extremely dangerous, and all the political information flowing out of the occupied city points to an imminent danger different from anything we've seen in previous periods.
اضافة اعلان
There are four scenarios awaiting Al-Aqsa Mosque. The first is a declaration of Israeli control over the empty spaces within the Haram al-Sharif compound, which spans 144 dunams — control that would mean a permanent Israeli presence, the ability to do as it wishes with the land, opening a dedicated gate to ease access, and building any structures it wants. The second is designating specific days of the week for Israelis, during which Muslims would be entirely barred from entering, turning the site into an Israeli religious space alternating with Muslim use — after the compound has previously seen a time-and-space division into two daily periods; but this would be something different, since we would be looking at a possible division by day instead.
The third scenario is the complete removal of Jordanian custodianship over Haram al-Sharif and its transfer to an Israeli institution — a plausible scenario. The fourth is dividing the compound and demolishing the Dome of the Rock specifically, in a first stage, while attributing the act to some extremist Israeli group.
Those ruling Israel today are not, as some claim, primarily a religious current — even though extremist groups do have ministers and members of Knesset.
What can be said here, specifically, is that the Israeli establishment as a whole — governmental, parliamentary, security, and military — is committed to the same program, lest anyone claim that new elections in Israel might bring in different people who would ease the confrontation with Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as well.
The deeper crisis here is that some voices in Arab politics warn of the possibility of a religious conflict erupting in the region because of what's happening at Al-Aqsa Mosque — even though the entire Israeli project is, at its core, a religious project: from the name of the state itself, to the biblical framing instilled in individuals and institutions, to the use of ancient myths and narratives to justify what's happening, to the religious slogan behind Israel's ambitions to expand under the banner of "Greater Israel," and the influence that powerful religious Israeli groups exert on Israeli decision-making. All of this means the conflict has been religious from day one, and that this is nothing new.
Israel awaits Knesset elections at the end of October — roughly two months from now — while the United States awaits its midterm elections on November 3, when Americans will vote for Congress, with all the implications that carries for Trump's presidency.
This means the timeline pressures on both sides may push certain Israeli parties to use this period to boost hardline political currents in Israel, and to take steps that would amount to an earthquake in the region — with Al-Aqsa Mosque potentially becoming one of the most prominent flashpoints, since targeting Al-Aqsa or taking legal or practical measures against it could be used to harvest votes. In other words, Al-Aqsa could become an electoral card ready to be played.
This means the coming weeks will be dangerous for Al-Aqsa Mosque, and there must be a strong warning about what could happen to it — and, by extension, about the possibility of a security explosion within Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the overall political and security impact of that on the entire neighborhood of historic Palestine — especially if we see unprecedented steps this time, compared to the gradual Israeli approach against Al-Aqsa, slowly administering poison to the entire region's people.
We must be prepared here for what may happen, and for what we will all have to confront, after all previous warnings went unheeded, while the occupation has continued its program exactly as it wishes.
