Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

While Jerusalem serves as Israel’s capital, and the Temple Mount is located within Israeli sovereignty, the popular satellite map program Google Earth divides the city and places the Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – within Palestinian territory.

Interactive Google Earth maps mark eastern sections of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount as “occupied territory,” set to become part of a future Palestinian state. Google Earth states it demarcates its maps according to international standards, but no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – even the failed Camp David final-status negotiations in 2000 – ever placed the Temple Mount within Palestinian territory. 

The United Nations considers eastern sections of Jerusalem, recaptured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, to be “disputed.”

The Israeli Knesset officially annexed the entire city of Jerusalem as its capital in 1980. Google Earth goes on to label the Gaza Strip as “Israeli occupied,” even though the Jewish state withdrew from Gaza in August 2005.

An interactive Google Earth map of an Israeli community in the northern West Bank features integrated user comments implying Jews are stealing water from neighboring Palestinians. The posting decries Israel’s purported water-confiscation practices as “illegal” and “racist,” when in actuality, dozens of major Israeli aquifers, many run by the Jewish National Fund, purify water running through Palestinian cities and return the cleaned water to the Palestinian towns. 

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, accused Google Earth of encouraging terrorism by sending the message that Palestinian attacks and “disinformation campaigns” are working. Indeed, Abu Nasser, second-in-command of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror group, told WorldNetDaily he was “thrilled” by Google Earth’s depictions.

“We congratulate Google and the American people in making this very important change in the Middle East. The Al Aksa Mosque (located on the Temple Mount) is part of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is part of Palestine. If such a big institution like Google corrected these historical mistakes on maps, maybe we can bring about a change in the depictions of Palestine by the American media, which is controlled by the Zionists.”

According to Abu Nasser, whose terror group claims it is trying to liberate the Al Aksa Mosque, the Jewish Temple “never existed. At least not on the area Jews now call the Temple Mount. Maybe a Temple existed somewhere, but not in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount exists only in the imaginations of the Jews and Americans.”

The United States, aided by Israel, over the last few weeks has provided 7,000 assault rifles and more than 1 million rounds of ammunition to militias associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, senior Fatah militants told WND. The arms were provided to bolster Fatah against rival Hamas factions, the Fatah militants said.

Abu Yousuf, a Fatah commader from Abbas’s Force 17 security forces, which received the weapons, said that while some of the new arms may be used in confrontations against Hamas, the bulk of the American rifles would be utilized to “hit the Zionists.”

“It’s unnatural to think these American weapons won’t be used against the Israelis,” Abu Yousuf said.

“If Israel will deliver what it promised to Abu Mazen (Abbas), [meaning] withdraw from Palestinian lands, including east Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, remove all the checkpoints in the West Bank, release our prisoners, and find a clear solution for our refugees, we’ll control our forces and the distribution of weapons.

“But if Israel doesn’t deliver, and we find ourselves manipulated by Israel, we cannot guarantee members of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and Force 17 will not use these weapons against Israel. Our goal is to change the occupation,” Abu Yousuf added.

The Fatah leader said the American weapons shipments may be shared with other Palestinian terror groups. He said that during large confrontations with Israel, such as the Jewish state’s 2002 anti-terror raid in Jenin, Fatah distributed weapons to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

“We don’t look where this piece or that piece of weapon came from when fighting the Israelis,” he said.

Some intelligence and security organizations associated with Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party are infiltrated by the Hamas terror organization, according to a high-ranking Palestinian intelligence officer. The information comes one week after this column quoted top Hamas officials as claiming they would obtain a portion of $86.4 million in aid the U.S. pledged to bolster Fatah’s security services.

“We are leading a large number of investigations and some of the results prove that such an infiltration by Hamas [of Fatah’s security and intelligence forces] exists,” the Palestinian intelligence official said. He pointed to several recent assassinations of senior Fatah intelligence officers blamed on Hamas.

“One should remember that the head of Fatah’s military intelligence was killed, the chief of Fatah’s general intelligence was gravely wounded and almost every day, Fatah intelligence officers are assassinated.