ISRAEL
Palestinians gather in front ol the Dome ol the Rock on the Temple Mount upon hearing that Israel just opened the tunnel.
Tunnel vision
Theology and sovereignty thrown into mix of tunnel debate.
ERIC SILVER ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
Jerusalem
When Israel opened the tunnel adjacent to the Temple Mount, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gushed that a visit there had "touched the very depths of my soul."
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat reciprocated in kind. Opening the tunnel, he fumetl, was a crime against his religion.
The Palestinian nation," he said, "will not stand by with its hands tied while its holy places are violated."
By the time Israelis and Palestinians had buried their 70 dead.the rhetoric had given way to realpolitik. Mr. Netanyahu was talking sovereignty, incitement and tourist revenues. Mr. Arafat was resisting the"Judaization" of Jerusalem and moaning that the prime minister humiliates him.
TTie theology was spurious on both sides, though it has been an element in the tunnel saga ever since excavations started in 1968. It is no accident the dig was supervised by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, not the Antiquities Authority.
The wall is sacred because Jews for centuries have prayed in its shadow. It was a part not of the Temple, but of the massive retaining wall King Herod eredr ed when he expanded the mount on which the Temple stood. King Herod was an idumaean, a Roman client king, who was con-
cuts under the Temple Mount, the Muslim Haram al Sharif The Al Aqsa mosque, third holiest site in Islam, is far to the south.
The main tunnel was completed in 1985 and has been open for a decade. What changed the night after Yom Kippur was the Hasmonean tunnel was opened and an exit door was cut on to the Via Dolorosa. The idea was to let visitors go in one end and out the other, instead of going back down the tunnel, in places barely a yard wide. The Tourism Ministry estimates this would increase the flow of visitors, paying about $3 a head, from 70,000 a year to 400,000.
The Muslims objected to the idea that the Israelis could pre-empt negotiations and do whatever they liked with an Arab quarter of the Old City. TTie exit could have been opened three years ago, but Yitzhak Rabin and later Shimon Peres chose not to provoke the Palestinians.
Eitan Haber, Mr. Rabin's bureau chief, testified last weekend: "Rabin, who loved Jerusalem, wanted to open that door, but the security people warned him, Tou will ignite a Fire.' Rabin decided it was not worth the blood that would be spilled." □
Canada has a role
Nation's leading diplomat pushes high-level involvement.
ROBERTA STAIEY STAFF REPORTER
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k anada should continue in its venerable role as international peace-I keeper and help broker a solution to the violence between Palestinians and Israelis, the country's top foreign affairs diplomat said at last week's end.
And both Jewish and Arab community leaders in Canada agree the country's elected officials have a role to play in helping staunch the bloodshed in Israel's latest conflict.
The Canadian government should "remain a goodwill broker and bring the parties together for negotiations and pres.sure the parties to instruct their people to cease from this kind of violence," said Moshe Ronen, immediate past chair of Israel affairs for Canadian Jewish Congress in Toronto.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Ministor Lloyd Axworthy met Sept. 27 with li^vuvW repre.sentatives in New York. The Jewish state's North American rejiresc^nta-tives also met with Israel Foreign Ministt^r David Ix'vy, who was vi.siting the United Nations.
"The recent Israeli actions taken in Jerusalem, as well as the decision to expand settlemenLs, have been unhelpful to the Middle East peace process," said Mr. Axworthy, who addressed the UN Security Council Sept. 27.
Mr. Ronen said that "same protest by Mr. Axworthy has to be .sent to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat regarding the behavior of his renegade .security forces." The deadly conflict, which had killed near-conlinues on next page
cemed as much for his own glory as for the faith of his Jewish sul> jecta.
There is no ancient tradition of devotion there. The i^etaining wall is not inherently holy. No one prays against its southern face (above U»e City of David) or its eastern face (opposite the Mount of Olives), though both are fully visible.
A walk through the contentious tunnel is interesting, exciting in a claustrophobic way, but it has more to do with sightseeing than devotion.
Beyond the buried wall a new, shorter tunnel has now been opened. It is an aqueduct through which the Hasmonean kings 2,2(X) years ago piped water from a huge cistern into the city.
As for Mr. Arafat's religion, the tunnel neither intrudes nor burrows under any Muslim holy place. It follows the outside of the retaining wall, but nowhere
Voters regret choice
NECHEMIA MEYERS ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
The virtual war that has broken out between Israelis and Palestinians has caused some of those who voted for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to regret their decision.
It is not that they have developed a sudden affection for Shimon Peres; it is rather that they find Mr. Netanyahu dangerously amateurish, and fear that he has — albeit unintentionally— exchanged the peace process for a war process.
Truth be told, many of those who cast their ballots for the Likud candidate did so for social and cultural reasons rather than for ideological ones. In his 320-page report on Labor's defeat, Prof. Shevah Weiss, former speaker of the Knesset and a distinguished political scientist, points out that significant sections of the Jewish population can't bring themselves to vote for Labor under any circumstances.
This is true, for example, of most people who live in poorer towns and neighborhooids. As in previous elections, the great majority of the Sephardim blueK»llar residents of south Tel Aviv voted for the Likud while the Ashke-
nazim business and professional people of north Tel Aviv supported Peres by a substantial margin.
Where Russian immigrants are concerned, the situation was different. In 1992, the majority of them supported Labor because they felt the previous Likud government had done a poor job of absorbing them. But this time most of them cast their votes for Mr. Netanyahu because they are even more intransigent than many Likud people where negotiations with the Arabs arc concerned. A whopping 83 percent of them, say pollsters, don't believe in the peace process.
Where the anti-Labor vote really went through the roof, however, was in Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox areas. Take Kfar Habad, for instance. There 99.6 percent of the electorate voted for Mr. Netanyahu, while in Meah She'arim it was "only" 98 percent Some Labor people think that the Orthodox can be won over; Mr. Weiss, however, has his doubts.
This has very serious implications where Labor is concerned, for — according to a study released this week — the Orthodox and particularly the ultra-Orthodox are a growing
percentage of Israel's Jewish population.
Whereas some years ago about three-quarters of Jewish children attended general (i.e. secular) schools, now that is down to under 65 percent. And while there has been a small rise in the number of those in state religious schools (catering for the modem Orthodox), the most dramatic increase has taken place in ultra-Orthodox schools. There enmlnient has almast doubled, going from eight to nearly 16 percent of the total school population.
It is true Labor did have an alliance with the Orthtxlox during the early years of the state, but a restoration of that alliance would demand I^bor not only abandon its present foreign policy, but also its support for a state based on secular rather than religious law. And most of its own current supporters wouldn't tolerate such a turnabout.
Yet despite Labor's weakness — among Sephardim Jews, Russian immigrants and the Orthodox — more .stumbling by Mr. Netanyahu aiuld bring a Labor victory in a snap election or, more likely. Labor participation in a government of national unity. V\
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