'Peace partner' orchestrated Temple Mount violence

Temple Mount in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM – Riots on the Temple Mount were orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority, which maintained an operations room from which its officials guided the violence, Jerusalem police sources told WND.

The sources said the PA manned the operations room with the Islamic Movement, a Muslim fundamentalist organization involved in Temple Mount activism. The intelligence unit of the Jerusalem police discovered the room Sunday, the same day as the clashes, the police sources said.

Information from the room's discovery led to the arrest on the mount of PA President Mahmoud Abbas' top adviser on Jerusalem affairs, Hatam Abd al-Qadir, on suspicion of disorderly conduct, the police sources told WND. Police said al-Qadir, detained during the clashes, attacked officers and urged worshipers to hold protests.

Asked to comment on the police accusations, Dimitri Diliani, the spokesman for Abbas' Fatah party in Jerusalem, refused to deny to WND the claimed discovery of the operations room nor his group's involvement in the Temple Mount riots.

"The Palestinian people in general and the PA specifically are working on defending our religious and national rights," Diliani said.

Diliani confirmed the PA's involvement with the Islamic Movement. The group has been accused of financing Palestinian terrorism.

"Some in Israel are trying to paint a picture of us as an ally of the Islamic Movement. I don't think it is wrong. We are allies with anyone who wants to defend such rights and shares with us such values despite our differences," he said.

Sunday's clashes, in which at least 25 Arabs and three Israeli policemen were wounded, bore all the marks of a preplanned PA campaign.

Official PA television and radio have been calling on Muslims to "storm" Al-Aqsa Mosque to "protect" the site from "Jewish threat." The Islamic Movement sponsored buses to transport young Arab Israeli men to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from the fundamentalist-dominated Muslim city of Um Al-Fahem.

The violence began when Israeli officers attempted to accompany a group of tourists on to the mount.

The Jerusalem police told WND they have film of several Muslim youth on the mount Sunday preparing the unrest by gathering rocks and pouring oil onto the ground to foil security forces.