ZIONIST OCCUPATION MINISTER VOWS TO BUILD TEMPLE ON ‘AQSA RUINS’

Ramallah, 28 Sha’ban 1434/6 July 2013 (MINA) – An Israeli occupation minister said that the government has to build the second temple on the ruins of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex in occupied Jerusalem, a report said on Friday.

The Hebrew daily Ma’ariv quoted Uri Ariel, the Housing Minister form the rightist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home), as saying that “we have built many buildings, including many ‘small temples’,” employing a term used in the Jewish world to refer to synagogues.

“We need something that is not like the Temple. We need the Temple. On the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex),” Ariel told participants at the Shilo Conference on Biblical Research and Archaeology. Shilo settlement located to the north of Ramallah in the West Bank.

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Ariel was rejected efforts US Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to revive the peace talks between Israel and Palestine.

“There are those who tell us that two states for two peoples is the real solution. And I say these are old wives’ tales. Between the Jordan (River) and the (Mediterranean) Sea there can be only one state – the state of Israel,” Ariel said.

The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage says that Israeli authorities are carrying out excavations near the Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex to build projects for Jewish worshipers and tourists.

The foundation said that goal of excavations “is to Judaize Jerusalem and the collapse of Al-Aqsa Mosque to build the so-called second temple on its ruins.”

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Last Friday, the Jewish Rabbi Yaakov Medan of Har (Mount) Etzion seminary said that the Israeli internal intelligence service Shin Bet supports the visits.

“The Shin Bet Jewish Division Director told me Jewish presence on the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa Mosque Complex) is essential for maintaining our sovereignty. He told me that in order to accommodate this trend he would increase the number of agents and security personnel on the Temple Mount,” Medan told, the Saudi Gazette quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the June 1967 War, annexed it in 1980, and has since built settlements there that are home to some 300,000 Jewish settlers. (T/P09/E1).

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Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)