High Tension in East Jerusalem
The situation in East Jerusalem is not stable. More than two thousand Israeli policemen were brought into the city in order to
protect the Israeli ceremonies of opening a new temple in the old city. Israeli rightist movements invited Israelis to come and support their demand in putting a cornerstone of the temple inside the Aqsa mosque area.
Muslims are not allowed to enter the old city and the Aqsa mosque while clashes erupt continuously in the city and the towns around it. The Palestinian leadership asked the Palestinians to go to Jerusalem and protect the holy mosque by staying in it. The American Israeli latest diplomatic crises continues to grow especially that Prime Minister Netanyahu did not issue any order to cancel the latest decisions to build new settlements in Jerusalem.
Instead, the Israeli government gives more attention to campaigns, which explain that Jerusalem is a part of Israel and therefore building in it is lawful.
Israeli media continues to criticize the latest crises and reports the American officials statements, which criticized Israel for its latest decision and considered Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apologies a good start but not enough for launching the peace process. The tense in East Jerusalem is also a subject, which the media have been talking about recently. The latest un-organized clashes in the city and around it do not seem to be a temporary thing. Since the latest extreme Israeli organizations invitations to divide the Aqsa mosque and the new decisions to build more settlements, clashes became almost daily between the Israeli policemen and the young Palestinians.
East Jerusalem differs from other cities since any clashes in it would cause a series of other clashes through the West Bank and would raise tension in the whole Arab world. Although Israeli officials state that nothing will happen to change the status Quo in the city, the Palestinians do not agree. The Aqsa mosque is completely controlled by the Israeli police. Nothing can be made or fixed inside the mosque without an Israeli agreement that sometimes takes months. Muslims are not always allowed to pray inside the mosque and if they are allowed to, they face harassment and threatening while going into it. One of the threatening policies is the police demand to keep the I.D cards of the Muslim visitors in order to track them if anything happens inside the mosque.
The process of judaizing the city does not stop; settlements are built everyday, provocation on checkpoints continue, holy sites are controlled by the police force, extreme Israelis are allowed to do anything they want while leftists and Palestinians are not. The two states solution is closer to imagination rather to reality. The price of losing the two states solution will be high since Jerusalem and the fight for it will cost all the sides a lot.
Prime Minister Netanyahu prefers to keep his weak coalition with extreme rightist Israelis while he ignores all the latest results that appeared because of his government policy. The current Israeli leadership is facing tough criticism from almost all the international community including the United States for the first time since thirty-five years. This is one of many other consequences, which will come as a result of the policy of editing the conflict, and the escape from the international community demands to reach a two states solution that is supposed to be fair for everyone.
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