The camera scans the holy terrain, the domed mosques and people strolling along a tree-shaded plaza. It zooms in on a group of foreigners who turn out, after a few mouse clicks, to be visiting US security chiefs on a guided tour of the hilltop revered by both Muslims and Jews.
In an Israeli police station at the Jaffa Gate into the Old City, in front of TV screens picking up images from 280 cameras scattered across the densely populated heart of Jerusalem, a 24-hour watch goes on for stirrings of apocalypse.
Police have stepped up surveillance in recent weeks, amid fears that as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict nears a critical juncture, the sacred hilltop with its two mosques, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, will become the ultimate flash point for disaster.
Israel's security chiefs are wrestling with two nightmare scenarios they say are increasingly realistic -- an attack on the mosques by Jewish extremists trying to stop Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and a collapse of parts of the structurally shaky mosque compound onto thousands of Muslim worshippers.
Muslims would almost certainly blame either catastrophe on the Israeli government and transform its conflict with the Arabs into a full-blown religious war.
In recent weeks, police have increased patrols at the Al Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques and undercover agents are shadowing well-known militants.
However, security officials say a lone assailant not on anyone's watch list -- someone, perhaps, like the Jewish nationalist who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 -- could easily slip through their net. One of their greatest fears is a shoulder-held missile fired from one of the alleys near the holy places.
Lately, with hard-liners increasingly desperate to stop Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal plan, the warnings have reached an unusually high pitch.
Israel is sitting on a "keg of nitroglycerin," said Carmi Gillon, a former chief of Shin Bet, the secret service. The agency has held top-level meetings on what it describes as a threat to Israel's existence. Its director, Avi Dichter, who rarely speaks in public, has said everyone should be losing sleep.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS