Al-Habbash claimed that the PA’s rejection of Jewish history on the Temple Mount was political and not religious. “We reject the Israeli claim that once there stood a Holy Temple in the place of the Aqsa Mosque,” he said. “If you open up the question of the Temple, you are opening up a religious war, ” he added.
“We do not look at this issue as a religious issue, but only as a political conflict,” he said. “The historical claims are not the issue. The occupation is the problem. We are speaking of a situation where one state has occupied another state.”
See? All you need to do is recognize that the PA is not a religious organization; if it were, it would be an entirely different problem in resolving the "occupation." Alter the stress a little, and (1) you make sense of the positive claims and (2) you suddenly don't have to simply read a lot of the text as "...". In other words, everybody, in 9th grade, should be taught the basic rules of cohesion and coherence (Halliday and Hasan, in other words--state of the art from 40 years ago, but apparently double-plus super-duper rocket-science).
However, the PA fully recognizes but does not claim jurisdiction over the issue as a primarily historical or religious issue, which is how many other organizations and Palestinians view it. They are not denying squat--that's for pundits to do with a strong motivation and axe to grind. They are merely narrowing their viewpoint.
Al-Habash denies religious pluralism, which for him is political (but of course; water may be necessary for survival, but water is political, one does not deny the other); he claims the Mount is a holy site, not a "political site", for Muslims and only Muslims. It's nothing new, it contiues the PA's denial of "Jewish" history and religious claims, which means that it is a historical and religious issue. But for them, it's about recognizing or denying Israeli or Zionist or Jewish
rule over the place. And that makes it political.
For the primarily political, religion, like water, is political. For religionists, religion is primarily religious, and politics are also religion. For the primarily political, water is political. For the biologist and thirsty marathon runner, water is primarily about biology.
= new reply since forum marked as read
thing was necessary. You are right, of course.
