Freedom Lawyers of America

> Israeli Lawmaker Wants to Prevent Arafat Burial on Temple Mount
>
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=\ForeignBureaus\archive\2
00312\FOR20031203d.html
>
> Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - He's not dead yet, but some Israelis already
> worry about where Yasser Arafat will be buried.
>
> An Israeli parliamentarian has proposed a law that would prevent burials
in
> the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Muslim cemetery on the Temple
> Mount, where Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is hoping to be
> buried.
>
> Sovereignty over Jerusalem - and particularly the Old City -- is one of
the
> most hotly contested issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
>
> Israel has ruled the Old City since Jerusalem was reunited under Israeli
> sovereignty following the 1967 Six-Day war. But day-to-day affairs on the
> Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, are the
> responsibility of Islamic religious authorities.
>
> Arieh Eldad, part of the Moledet faction of the National Union Party, has
> proposed that burials in the Jerusalem's Old City be prohibited from now
on
> unless special permission is granted.
>
> "The law suggests that nobody will ever be allowed to be buried in the
[Old
> City] only by special permission of the prime minister," Eldad said in a
> telephone interview.
>
> Eldad said he was motivated to propose the law about a month ago when
> Arafat indicated that he wanted to be buried on the Temple Mount --
> Judaism's holiest site -- currently occupied by Muslim religious shrines,
> including the golden Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque, the third
holiest
> site in Islam.
>
> Arafat wants to transform the site where the first and second Jewish
> Temples once stood and the Jewish Kingdom reigned for the last 3,000 years
> not only into a religious Muslim center, but a political center, Eldad
said.
>
> Israel dates its claim to Jerusalem from the time of the Biblical King
> David, who made the city his capital. Since then, the Holy City has never
> been capital to another nation or people, although it has had many
> different rulers.
>
> "Arafat is the first leader of the Palestinian people. If he is buried
> there, [his tomb] will be a center for pilgrimage," Eldad added.
>
> Arafat has long expressed his desire to pray at the Al Aksa mosque. He
also
> has urged Palestinians to become martyrs for the sake of the Al-Aksa
> mosque. Palestinians call the violence and terrorism of the last three
> years, the Al Aksa intifadah (uprising), making it a focal point of their
> struggle.
>
> Because of Jewish religious law, there are no Jewish cemeteries in the Old
> City (or within the walls of any city), and as a rule, no Jews have been
> buried in the Old City for thousands of years, except a few dozen who were
> buried there during the siege of the Old City in 1948, Eldad said.
>
> A handful of Christians are buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
> where Orthodox Christian tradition holds that Jesus was buried.
>
> But a few families hold burial plots in the Muslim cemetery on the Temple
> Mount, and one of them has promised a plot to Arafat, Eldad said.
>
> The late Jordanian King Abdullah, the great-great grandfather of the
> present King of Jordan is buried there.
>
> The last person to be buried in the Muslim cemetery was Palestinian
> Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Faisal Husseini, who died suddenly of a
> heart attack while traveling abroad two years ago.
>
> Tens of thousands of Palestinians lined the roads of Jerusalem to pay
their
> last respects to Husseini and Palestinian Authority VIPs, and Israeli
> allowed close into Jerusalem from the West Bank -- sealed at the time --
> for the funeral.
>
> Eldad said he believes his law will be supported in the Knesset because
> many parliamentarians regretted that there was no such law in place at the
> time of Husseini's death.
>
> Israeli Arab Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, who is an advisor to Arafat,
> criticized the proposal and said he would fight it. He charged that Eldad
> was chasing the Palestinians in both life and death.
>
> "Faisal Husseini is buried there," Tibi said by telephone. "Yasser Arafat,
> I hope he will live [on and on]. They should not interfere with his life
or
> his death."
>