Word: aqsa
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...other delegates to last week's Rabat summit of 26 predominantly Moslem nations seemed less confused than the Yemeni about where they were-but not about why. Morocco's King Hassan II helped organize the conference after the fire last August in Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque, third holiest of Islam's shrines after Mecca and Medina. The summit's aim was to discuss the problem of Al Aqsa and protest Israel's occupation of the Arab sector of Jerusalem. In addition, militant Arabs hoped that they could persuade non-Arab Moslems from Indonesia...
LONG after the fire at Al Aqsa mosque had been put out, Arab leaders last week seemed determined to stoke it with the most inflammatory rhetoric since the Six-Day War of 1967. "There is no hope, no way except through force," Egypt's President Nasser said in a broadcast to his soldiers about the fire, which damaged the revered mosque in Israeli-ruled Jerusalem. "Hopes for a peaceful solution have been cruelly shattered," declared Jordan's King Hussein. "Now that all peaceful methods have been exhausted, I appeal to you to declare jihad [holy war]," cried Saudi...
Plainly, the Arab leaders were playing politics with the mosque fire. It scarcely seemed to matter to them that an itinerant Australian Christian had confessed to setting the blaze. Nor did Arab leaders bother to note that Al Aqsa compound, far from being fireproof, had been the scene of blazes in 1949 and 1964, during Jordanian rule. What did matter was that, because millions of Arabs reflexively held Israel responsible for the latest fire, guerrilla organizations were strengthened in their hard-line anti-Israeli positions. Arab governments adopted correspondingly tough stances in an effort to match the extremists' thunder...
...Arab commando organization, demanded shrilly in its broadcasts: "Moslems, what are you waiting for? The Zionists are burning down your sacred shrines. How can you face the Prophet Mohammed?" Jordan's King Hussein, whose grandfather King Abdullah was assassinated by a Palestinian Arab gunman in front of the Aqsa mosque in 1951, called for an Arab summit meeting...
Whatever the verdict, the Al Aqsa blaze was a disturbing reminder of how deep are the emotions that divide Arab and Israeli-and how formidable an obstacle the control of Jerusalem is to any Middle Eastern settlement...