ISRAEL: PALESTINIANS CLASH OVER HERITAGE SITES

IN HEBRON ISRAELI POLICE CLASHED
WITH PALESTINIAN DEMONSTRATORS

JERUSALEM - Clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protestors over the issue of holy sites have provoked a wave of condemnation in the Arab press for Israel's behaviour. Israeli police officers in Jerusalem entered the plaza containing Al Aksa Mosque on Sunday after Palestinian youths barricaded inside threw stones at visitors they believed to be radical Jewish settlers. The resulting clashes ended with more than a dozen youths injured, seven men detained and four police officers slightly injured. The site was calm but tense by late afternoon. The confrontation followed similar disturbances at the Cave of the Patriarchs in the occupied city of Hebron in recent days involving stone-throwing youths and Israeli security forces. Those troubles began after the Israeli government decided to include the Hebron site along with Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem on a list of national heritage sites scheduled for renovation and upkeep by the state.

All three shrines - the Hebron cave, the Bethlehem tomb and the plaza in Jerusalem known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount - came under Israeli control in the 1967 Middle East war and have been the sites of frequent tension ever since. After the police raid, Palestinian leaders accused Israel of increasing tensions and undermining American efforts to restart peace negotiations. The incidents followed clashes over Israel's decision to list two disputed shrines as heritage sites. Palestinians feared that Jewish religious extremists would use festive marches during the Jewish festival of Purim as an opportunity to establish Israeli control over the holy sites.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Śrīmad Bhāgavatam asks, “What is the conception of māyā ?” rite 'rtham yat pratīyeta (SB 2.9.34) – what seems to us to be the correct reading of the environment, is actually not so. ... What we conceive, feel, trust and believe, is not in consonance with the universal reading; it is māyā. Even our belief is within the realm of māyā. Our conceptions will have no standing in the interest of the Absolute. What we read with our local interest, we will not find if we read from the universal interest.

Śrīla Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Mahārāja :
“Hearing to See” - “The Plane of Ignorance and Error”
(Article from an informal discourse)
Bhaktivedanta Memorial Library - www.bvml.org/SBRSM/