Fears of a violent clash between Jewish and Muslim worshipers on the Temple Mount were allayed Sunday after police barred both a group of Jewish ultra-nationalists and Arab men from entering the Jerusalem holy site, temporarily ending weeks of built-up tension over a planned Jewish rally at the compound.
Actually, if you read further, they didn't actually succeed in keeping many of those "Arab men" from entering the Temple Mount complex, but acknowledging that upfront would have sort of destroyed the symmetry of the lede. Accuracy is a small price to pay.
But in a setback to police, hundreds of Palestinians, including West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, managed to enter the Temple Mount compound early Sunday morning in defiance of police restrictions in place at the compound Sunday on all worshipers.
In a live broadcast from the Temple Mount on the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera, Yousef called on Palestinians and Muslims from all over the world to come and "save" the Al-Aksa mosque and Jerusalem from the Jews.
"Al Aksa is in danger," Yousef said. "The attempts to desecrate Al Aksa have not ended."
If a Jew sets foot on the hill where our holy Temple once stood, you see, it would desecrate the holiness of the site that the Muslims erected there for the purpose of establishing the superiority of their faith to ours.
Understood.
But you would think the Jerusalem Post would know better than this.
As the day ended without major incident, Jerusalem police breathed a sigh of relief, all too aware that the tinderbox that the Temple Mount is was likely to erupt another day.
By late afternoon on a mild spring-day, the security cordon around the Old City was lifted, and, as the sun reflected off the ancient temple walls, life was returning to normal.
"... is was...?" And as everyone knows, it's been over 2,000 years since the sun last "reflected off the ancient temple walls." If we can't get our own story straight, then maybe it's asking too much of the AP to do so.
