From all indications it appears clear that the French role in support of the UNESCO resolution that referred to the Temple Mount as an exclusively Muslim Holy Site was no accident. The French Foreign Ministry was well aware that this assertion constituted a repudiation of Bible and of the long historical record of Jewish connection with the Temple Mount. Islam only emerged more than a millennium after the Israelites had sanctified the Mount. In the long dark exile that Jewry endured, the cry “Next year in Jerusalem” was proclaimed faithfully generation after generation. Little wonder that President Clinton was thunderstruck when Arafat averred that the Jews had no historical connection with the Temple Mount. Yet now, France seems intent on detaching Israel from this venerated site in Jewish religion and history.

More ominously still, the French demarche appears to be part of a wider script in which the endgame is UN Security Council confirmation of a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, as its capital. The strategy would be implemented in stages.

The first step, to be taken very likely only after the U.S.presidential elections, would entail the Palestinians’ proclaiming an independent state. To secure widespread recognition of such an act, the new state would have to be perceived – at least to the satisfaction of France and other democracies – as a united entity with “democratic” credentials. This might explain why Abu Mazen suddenly announced that elections (since postponed) would be held in both the West Bank and the Gaza strip. By this means, both unity and democracy would be show-cased, at least in theory.

Read the full article at Times of Israel