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Inside Israel

Synagogues to be left standing


By Ryan Jones
September 11, 2005

More than 20 synagogues will be left standing in the Gaza Strip, despite the fact Jews no longer live in the area after being forcibly evicted in accordance with internationally-backed land-for-peace efforts.

Israel's cabinet voted 14-2 Sunday against razing Gaza's synagogues, reversing an earlier decision not to let the buildings fall into Palestinian Arab hands.

The government's original position was fiercely debated in Israel's High Court, where opponents argued it was better to let gentile mobs desecrate the synagogues than to have Jews abandon the sanctity of and demolish their own houses of worship.

Last week the court ruled that the government could move forward with its plan to blow up the synagogues.

But over the weekend, 11 cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, suddenly changed their minds on what Israel Insider noted would have been the ?greatest destruction of synagogues since Kristallnacht in November 1938.?

Sharon and other ministers were accused of altering their position for the sake of their own political survival.

The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, was furious over the about-face, charging that Israel was purposely putting it in a lose-lose situation.

Senior PA officials said the synagogues were a symbol of the ?Israeli occupation,? and would cause anger and rage among the Palestinian Arab masses, but expressed concern over the international condemnation that could follow the desecration of the Jewish houses of worship by Muslim mobs.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Army Radio Sunday that he would seek international intervention to ensure the synagogues are not defiled.

If the PA cannot restrain its citizens from demolishing or desecrating the buildings, ?the world will know with whom we are dealing,? Shalom added.

His reliance on international understanding for the Israeli and Jewish position, however, may be misguided.

Between 1949 and 1967, during the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem?s Old City, 60 synagogues were desecrated and destroyed, their ruins used to house livestock.

In a more recent and serious example of Muslim religious intolerance, ?Palestinian? mobs ransacked the tomb of the Israeli patriarch Joseph in Shechem after IDF forces were ordered to withdraw from the religious complex in October 2000.

Three years later they finished the job by smashing the tombstone placed there in Joseph?s memory.

In both instances, the international community was deafening in its silence.

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