BEIRUT -- With a few exceptions, the Israelis contend that the bloody tumult in Israel and the occupied territory has been instigated and stage-managed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a means of strengthening his hand in the faltering peace process.
This is not taken seriously by Western leaders such as French President Jacques Chirac, who put the blame squarely on far-right Israeli politician Gen. Ariel Sharon and called Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, an "irresponsible provocation." Even U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright pronounced the visit "definitely counter-productive."
In fact, historically, nothing has aroused Palestinian emotions like slights to Jerusalem's holy places. Back in the '20s, the worst demonstrations ever to shake the British mandate broke out as a result of early Zionist efforts to alter the status quo governing Muslim and Jewish rights around the Wall, Judaism's most sacred site. And it was another such attempt -- the digging of a tunnel under the mosques -- that, in 1996, triggered the last popular upheaval.