Word: aqsa
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...years ago, and throws stone after stone at the Israeli riot police. Below him, a middle-aged Jew flees the barrage, holding on to his black yarmulke as he runs, shouting, "Death to the Arabs!" A minute before, these two were praying in the midday heat--one at al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam, and the other 100 yards away at the Western Wall, revered by Jews as the place of prayer closest to the site of their biblical temple. That abrupt transformation from worship to violence--it occurred in a flash last Friday--is sparked...
...architecture, where all-important shrines are built atop the ruins of other all-important shrines, fueling one of the most fraught territorial disputes in human history. Atop the ruins of the Jews' Great Temple, which according to Jewish prophecy must be rebuilt to welcome the Messiah, stands the Al Aqsa mosque, the site of the Prophet Mohammed's ascension to heaven and the third holiest site in Islam...
...While the Palestinians are chagrined that the pontiff's hosts in the Holy City will be the Israelis, Israel is unhappy that he'll meet with the Palestinian Authority-appointed Grand Mufti on the Temple Mount, a site on which the third-holiest site in Islam - the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock - is built atop the ruins of Judaism's holiest temple. "The Palestinian Authority will do everything in its power to make the trip appear to confirm its claim on East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, while the Israelis will do everything to prevent that...
...Most recently, the Israeli authorities angered conservative Jewish groups when they slapped down an attempt by Jerusalem's right-wing mayor, Ehud Olmert, to stop construction of a new emergency exit at the Al Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam that sits on top of the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount. A perennial problem for the keepers of the city's peace is the fact that Jewish prophecy posits the rebuilding of Solomon's Temple as a precondition for the arrival of the Messiah, which would inevitably involve the destruction of Al Aqsa...
...Adding to the explosive brew are a number of Jewish extremists, who in their efforts to begin the rebuilding of the temple have been plotting to blow up Al Aqsa and the neighboring Dome of the Rock. Now, Israeli authorities fear a millennial convergence between the messianic visions of some evangelical Christian groups and those Jewish extremists. "Israeli police are most worried about Christian end-timers who believe that before Christ can return there has to be Armageddon," says Beyer. "Their intelligence suggests that some groups want to hasten the apocalypse by blowing up the Islamic holy sites...