August 2000, Yasser Arafat

2000 Chairman Yasser Arafat

In 2000, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat turned down President Bill Clinton’s offer of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem and an opening offer of $23 billion in aid. Ever since then it has been clear that there is no diplomatic solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arafat’s renewal of terrorist violence only reinforced this point.

Source: Rubin, Barry, “Hamastan,” The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2007.

2000 Chairman Of The PLO Yasser Arafat

During the 2000 Camp David Summit, Yasser Arafat said that no Jewish Temple ever existed on the Temple Mount.  [Interview with Dennis Ross, Fox News Sunday, April 21, 2002]   A year later, the Palestinian Authority-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrima Sabri, told the German publication Die Welt, “There is not [even] the smallest indication of the existence of a Jewish temple on this place in the past. In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history.”

These views are contradicted by a book entitled A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif, published by the Supreme Moslem Council in 1930. The Council, the supreme Moslem body in Jerusalem during the British Mandate, said in the guide that the Temple Mount site “is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”

In a description of the area of Solomon’s Stables, which Islamic Waqf officials converted into a new mosque in 1996, the guide states: “…little is known for certain about the early history of the chamber itself. It dates probably as far back as the construction of Solomon’s Temple… According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D.” [Jerusalem Post, January 26, 2001]

More authoritatively, the Koran – the holy book of Islam – describes Solomon’s construction of the First Temple (34:13) and recounts the destruction of the First and Second Temples (17:7).