The PA has found something else to complain about.
The Palestinian Authority slammed a Sunday cabinet decision to allot NIS 85 million to a development project for the Western Wall over the next five years, AFP reported.
Ghassan Hatib, a PA spokesperson reportedly said: “Israel does not have permission to make changes in the occupied territories, especially in Jerusalem.
“This move is preventing us from reaching an agreement, because any solution must include Jerusalem,” Hatib added.
The project will upgrade physical and transportation infrastructure at the site, provide access to new archeological findings, and run educational programs for soldiers and students
What a bunch of hypocrites.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
8:10PM: Can’t live with us, can’t live without us.
A daughter to one of the royal families in the Persian Gulf is in Israel undergoing a complicated heart operation, according to Knesset Member Ayoub Kara.
The royal patient insisted on undergoing the procedure here – after her doctors recommended one of Israel’s leading hospitals as the best place to undergo the operation. For security and other reasons, the name of the hospital has not been published.
7:50PM: Do you want to know what the real obstacles to peace are? Here’s one:
The Western Wall belongs to Muslims and is an integral part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Haram al-Sharif [the Noble Sanctuary], according to an official paper published on Monday by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Information in Ramallah.
The paper, which has been presented as a “study,” was prepared by Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official with the PA Ministry of Information to “refute” Jews’ claim to the Western Wall.
In the past, PA leaders and officials had also denied Jews’ right to the Kotel, insisting that the Temple Mount had never stood in the area.
The new paper claims that the Western Wall, or Al-Buraq Wall as it is known to Muslims, constitutes Waqf property owned by an Algerian-Moroccan Muslim family.
It claims that there isn’t one stone in the wall that belongs to the era of King Solomon.
The “study” also found that the path next to the Wailing Wall was never a public road, but was established only for the use of Muslims living in the area or making their way toward the mosques on the Temple Mount.
“The Zionist occupation falsely and unjustly claims that it owns this wall which it calls the Western Wall or Kotel,” Taha, who is also a renowned Palestinian poet and writer, wrote in his project. “The Al-Buraq Wall is in fact the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
He added that the Jews had never used the site for worship until the Balfour Declaration of 1917. “This wall was never part of the so-called Temple Mount, but Muslim tolerance allowed the Jews to stand in front of it and weep over its destruction,” he wrote.
“During the British mandate in Palestine, the number of Jews who visited the wall increased to a point where the Muslims felt threatened and then there was the Al-Buraq Revolution on August 23, 1929, where dozens of Muslims were martyred and a large number of Jews were killed.”
The author, who is affiliated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, emphasizes that over the past few decades Jews had failed to prove that the wall had any connection to their religion.
“Many studies published by Jewish experts have affirmed that there is no archeological evidence that the Temple Mount was built during the period of King Solomon,” the paper added. “One can only conclude that the Al-Buraq Wall is a Muslim wall and an integral part of the Aqsa Mosque and Haram Al-Sharif. No one has the right to claim ownership over it or change its features or original character. Also, no one has the right to agree with the occupation state’s racist and oppressive measures against history and holy sites.”
The PA ministry’s study also warned that “no Muslim or Arab or Palestinian had the right to give up one stone of the Al-Buraq Wall or other religious sites.”
5:00PM: Lock, boycott and a cement barrel:
Pro-Palestinian activists blockaded an Ahava store in London’s Covent Garden on Monday, resulting in the store closing for the day.
Two activists reportedly locked themselves to a cement-filled barrel at the entrance to the property and remained there until police arrived to remove them.
I’m all for these “activists” using cement-filled barrels at their protests. I just wish they would be in them.
11:08AM: According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp, there is circumstantial evidence proving the obvious: Hizbullah killed former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
Also obvious: the UN is at best negligent, and, at worst, complicit.
Hezbollah is responsible for the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. This conclusion, based on circumstantial evidence, has been unearthed by United Nations investigators and a Lebanese officer, who was assassinated following the revelations, according to an investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
According to the report, the UN International Independent Investigation Commission’s findings are based on an elaborate examination of Lebanese phone records. They suggest that Hezbollah men communicated with the owners of cell phones allegedly used to coordinate the detonation that killed Hariri and 22 others in Beirut on February 14, 2005
The Lebanese and UN phone analysis was obtained by CBC and shared with The Washington Post. According to the Washington Post, the revelations are likely to add to speculation that a UN prosecutor plans to indict members of Hezbollah by the end of the year.The Head of the UN tribunal, Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare, declined a request to comment and told CBC that the investigation’s findings would be presented at the international court.
According to the Washington Post, the latest findings mark a major development in an investigation. CBC uncovered an internal UN document indicating that a top Lebanese intelligence official, Colonel Wissam al-Hassan, was considered by some UN sleuths as a potential suspect in Hariri’s murder.
Suspect not investigated
Hassan, who serves as Lebanon’s key liaison with the UN investigators, oversaw security for Hariri at the time of the assassination but had taken the day off to take an examination at a university.
An internal UN memo, dated March 10, 2008, said Hassan’s “alibi is weak and inconsistent” and recommended that he be “investigated quietly” to determine whether he played a role in Hariri’s killing. The CBC report states that the recommendation was not implemented and that Hassan was not questioned.
The report obtained by the Canadian network faults the UN for misplacing a vital piece of evidence – a complex analysis of Lebanese phone records that allegedly pinpointed the phones used by Hariri’s killers – in the early months of the investigation.
The UN commission is also criticized for failing to provide sufficient security for a key Lebanese officer, Colonel Wissam Eid, who was killed after helping the UN unravel the crime mystery.
Eid, a former student of computer engineering, had conducted a review of the call records of all cell phones that had been used in the vicinity of the Hotel St. George, where Hariri’s convoy was bombed, the Washington Post reported.
He quickly established a network of “red” phones that had been used by the hit squad, established links with other small phone networks he suspected of being involved in planning the operation, and traced all the networks back to a landline at Hezbollah’s Great Prophet Hospital in South Beirut, and a handful of government-issued cell phones set aside for Hezbollah.
“The Eid report was entered into the UN’s database by someone who either didn’t understand it or didn’t care enough to bring it forward. It disappeared,” CBC said.
According to the report, it would be another year and a half before a team of British investigators, working for the UN, discovered Eid’s paper and contacted him. Eight days later, he was killed in a car bomb
9:35AM: BDS abomination of the day: This one is actually from last month, but there is no statute of limitations on mocking those who deserve it.
As with all of these BDS videos, I warn those with an aversion to washed-up hippies, butch women, and failed musicians against viewing.
