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Crimes against Islam |
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Israeli Excavations
Threaten Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock
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- Newspapers,
broadcasts and reports from Jerusalem indicated that the Israeli
excavations around the holy Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the
Rock were continuing and that they threaten to cause cracks and
bring down both temples.
- The Jerusalem
Post,
in its 4,406th edition of August 22,
1981, reported that archaeological teams belonging to the Israeli
military occupation authorities were carrying out excavations
aimed at discovering the tombs of the kings of Israel.
- The Israeli
military occupation radio reported on the morning of Thursday,
August 27, 1981, that the two Chief Rabbis in occupied Palestine
had visited a tunnel discovered recently under the Wailing Wall--
i.e., the Holy Bozak-- leading to a sensitive area-- i.e., the
Sacred Shrine. The next morning, on August 28, the enemy radio
announced that the Islamic Organization at Jerusalem had asked the
occupation authorities to allow its engineers to explore the site
of the tunnel, and to undertake the necessary measures in the
light of their discovery. The broadcast further said that the
tunnel was no more than an old well and that it had been
discovered well over a month earlier.
- The Jerusalem
Post
reported in its edition of August 28 details of
the tunnel excavations carried out a month earlier by a task force
belonging to the Israeli Ministry of Religions. The report added
that the excavations had begun a century ago, and that a room had
been built there for a synagogue. The report further said that the
excavations extended for some distance under the Sacred Shrine,
and that they were meant to reach the Dome of the Rock.
- The
construction engineer of the holy Al Aqsa Mosque, Essam Awaad,
released a later report concerning the digging of the tunnel. The
report revealed that the excavations started down below the
western wall of the sacred shrine in the place known as Matthara,
between Sleselah and Kattanin gates, and extended 25 meters east
at a depth of 6 meters, reaching a place in front of Kaitbai
fountain facing the western part of the Dome of the Rock.
- These
excavations, it has been noted, surround the sacred shrine and the
Al Aqsa Mosque from the south and the Dome of the Rock from the
west. These excavations are an extension of their counterparts and
of the incessant encroachment on Islamic cultural buildings
adjacent to the western and southern walls of the sacred shrine,
as well as the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
- Regardless of
the dispute between the religious communities and the Israeli
military governors on the site of the first excavations and their
allegations that they are the burial places of the ancient kings
of Israel and, regardless of their claim that the tunnel they had
discovered in the second place was no more than an old well, the
Israeli excavations in the said area constitute a flagrant
violation of the sanctity of the holy Islamic sites and
persistently threaten to bring them down, thus paving the way for
their demolition and the setting up of a shrine for Judaism in
their stead and in the courtyards of the sacred shrine thereof.
- These
excavations constitute a challenge to the Arab and Islamic worlds,
and constitute constant violations of the Hague and Geneva
Conventions as well as the resolutions of UNESCO, the Security
Council and the entire United Nations, and hence deserve attention
and action on all levels.
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