ISRAEL OFFERS PALESTINIANS
CONTROL OF TEMPLE MOUNT
A reader forwarded the following article from World Net Daily of 28 August 2007
“Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office today presented the Palestinian Authority with a formal plan in which the Jewish state would forfeit the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – to Muslim control, according to top Palestinian sources.
The sources said Olmert's plan calls for the entire Temple Mount plaza to fall under Arab sovereignty; Jerusalem's Old City holy sites near the Mount to be governed by a Jewish, Christian and Muslim task force; and the Western Wall plaza below the Mount to be controlled by Israel …
The report follows a WND exclusive article last week stating Palestinian negotiators drafting an agreement behind the scenes with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office made clear they will not accept any final peace deal with Israel unless the Jewish state forfeits the Temple Mount.
According to Palestinian negotiators who took part in today's Olmert-Abbas meeting, the Israeli leader today also presented Abbas with a plan for Israel to evacuate most of the West Bank and cede eastern sections of Jerusalem. The plan called for Israel to retain three main settlement blocks and in exchange Israel would offer the Palestinians Israeli Arab towns in the north of the country, the Palestinian negotiators told WND.
David Baker, a spokesman for Olmert, would neither confirm nor deny the prime minister offered the Temple Mount.
He said ahead of today's talks the summit would center on "the development of Palestinian-governing institutions, bolstering Abbas' government and issues concerning Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side.”
This is a remarkable development. Other leaders in Israel who have sought to hand over land to the Palestinians have met their end through either being killed, incapacitated, or voted out. The West Bank is the place of the mountains of Israel, which prophecy indicates Israel will possess in the latter days (Ezek. 38:8). The site of the Holy of Holies at the Temple Mount is the most Holy place for Israel; to hand that site over to the Arabs would doubtless cause much unrest in the land. We watch these events with great interest.
Christopher Maddocks