Word: aqsa
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...control of the biblical Holy Land. After the first Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1096, European pilgrims began streaming into the city, and 23 years later, two veterans of the Crusade founded an order of monastic knights to protect the travelers. They were allotted a headquarters in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, viewed by Jews and many Christians as the site of the Temple of Solomon - hence the new group's name. Initially modest (its coat of arms was two knights on one horse because that was all they could afford), its fortunes skyrocketed when the Vatican extended it extraordinary privileges...
...signatories include Sheik Mohammed Nur Abdullah, vice president of the Fiqh Council of North America; Sheikh Salem Falahat, director-general of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan; Hasan Shariatmadari, head of the Iranian National Republicans party; and Sheikh Ikrima Said Sabri, former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque. "This is a determination by mainstream, traditional Muslim scholars and authorities who cover all the branches of Islam, and that's very unusual," says David Ford, Director of the Inter-Faith Program at the University of Cambridge, who helped launch the letter in London this morning. "It is unapologetic...
...Gaza City, said business was down 80% because, without international funding, the bankrupt government can't pay some 160,000 civil servants. "If they don't get salaries, they don't buy anything," he observes. And while Hamas continues to observe a cease-fire, gunmen of the secular al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - the military wing of the deposed Fatah party - vowed last week to continue cross-border attacks. A member of the equally militant Islamic Jihad, who called himself Abu Aziz, told Time his cadres will continue firing homemade Qassam rockets into Israel, even though the Israeli military responds...
...took the oath of office last week by videophone because Israel refuses to let Hamas officials travel by road between the West Bank and Gaza. Still, Hamas is observing a 14-month-old cease-fire with Israel, though other Palestinian groups continue to launch attacks. Last week, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades sent a hitchhiking suicide bomber into the West Bank settlement of Kedumim. His bomb exploded in a car killing himself and four Jewish settlers...
...possible, as do initial Hamas statements supporting an extension of the current cease-fire with Israel. But Hamas will immediately face grave challenges such as a bankrupt treasury, nervous international donors and, most importantly, a decentralized security force and the fact that groups such as Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs brigades and Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad are well outside its control. How Hamas handles these three key issues will provide the best guide for whether we should expect moderation over time. Certainly Hamas' past performance offers little cause for optimism...