Palestinian fury was fueled when Nir Barakat, the mayor of Jerusalem, pushed ahead with a controversial plan to tear down houses in the al-Bustan neighborhood of the Arab sector of the disputed holy city to build a tourist park.

For Palestinians, who are being steadily forced out of East Jerusalem to make way for Israelis, Barakat's plan is little more than a land grab intended to irrevocably change the demography of the district where 180,000 Jewish settlers live.

With Palestinians up in arms at the Israeli government's decision to designate the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem as "national heritage" sites that Israel will renovate, the moves in Jerusalem have triggered intense Palestinian anger.

Washington and other Western capitals have made known their displeasure, not just over the shrines but on Israel's continued demolition of Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem.

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner branded the heritage sites move as provocative and unhelpful. But this does not appear to have made much impact on Netanyahu's government.

The swelling crisis has been inflamed by the prime minister's insistence that Israel must hold onto the Jordan River Valley, a strategic sector that runs along the eastern boundary of the West Bank, under any peace settlement.

The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank as part of the independent state they seek.

On top of all this, Jewish settlers, fearful that they will be forced to abandon the West Bank under a peace settlement, have been systematically storming Palestinian areas, purportedly to establish their right to pray at ancient synagogues in land they say God gave to the Jews.

The mushrooming unrest exploded into weekend clashes around the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, between Muslim worshipers and visitors they claimed were Jewish extremists.

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, called for the "urgent" intervention of the United States to pressure Israel to halt the "attacks" on Al-Aqsa and the West Bank shrines.

In this tinderbox atmosphere, the threat of third intifada erupting has grown alarmingly at a time when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is pressing to restart long-stalled peace talks.

The first intifada broke out in 1987, triggered when an Israeli motorist killed Palestinians in a road accident. It lasted until the Oslo peace accords were reached in 1993 -- and undoubtedly influenced events that led to those historic agreements.

The second intifada erupted in September 2000. Palestinian frustration at the failure to secure an independent state burst into violence when Ariel Sharon, shortly to become prime minister, made a highly provocative incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Thousands of Palestinians were killed in these uprisings, along with hundreds of Israelis, mostly victims of Hamas suicide bombings during the second intifada.

The eruption of a new uprising now, amid high-octane tension across the Middle East, largely because of the confrontation with Iran, and the failure of U.S. President Barack Obama's high-profile attempt to rekindle peace talks, could be extremely dangerous.

Netanyahu, the right-wing hawk caught between playing to his supporters in the settler movement and pressure from Washington to take steps to reactivate the peace process, urged Barakat to shelve his plans for the tourist park known as the "King's Garden" project.

That was widely seen as a halfhearted effort. Barakat said Tuesday he would consult with Palestinian residents in the Bustan district before any demolitions went ahead. But he made no commitment to scrap the project that the Palestinians consider is just another plot by the Israelis to "change facts on the ground" and consolidate their grip on Jerusalem.

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem, ruled by Jordan until the 1967 war, as the capital of their putative state. Israel insists that a unified Jerusalem is the indivisible and eternal capital of the Jewish state.

Barakat maintains the tourist project will revive a biblical garden dating back 3,000 years to the era of the Jewish King Solomon, thus cementing Israel's claim to historical legitimacy as possessor of the disputed land.

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News