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Umm el-Fahm ex-mayor tells Or Commission: 'Israel must return land to Wakf' Israel must return 6 percent of its territory (inside the Green Line) to the Muslim people, Ra'ad Salah, a former mayor of Umm el-Fahm and leader of the radical (northern) wing of the Islamic Movement told the Or Judicial Commission yesterday. Salah, who repeatedly clashed with Supreme Court Justice Theodore Or, head of the commission examining the Arab riots of October 2000, said Israel had destroyed 1,200 mosques, turning some into restaurants, clubs, and garbage dumps, and torn up Muslim cemeteries for parking lots. According to Salah, all of the land of Palestine was once holy soil belonging to the Wakf, the custodian of Muslim properties. But while most of the land belonged to the Wakf in general, 6 percent belonged specifically to the Wakf and had to be returned to it. He said this property had been classified as abandoned property after the war of 1948. Salah repeatedly clashed with Or over the length and substance of his replies. 'This is not a multiple choice quiz,' he said when an exasperated Or asked why he could not answer yes or no to one of his questions. At another point, Salah told Or: 'Be quiet and listen to me closely.' Salah said the riots were triggered by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount on Thursday, September 28, and the long-standing grievances of the Israeli Arab community. He said Sharon had 'defiled' the Temple Mount by forcing his way in even though he was unwanted. 'It was a very serious desecration of Al-Aksa's honor,' said Salah. 'If someone comes to your home as a guest, you will receive him warmly. But if someone ignores your objections and forces his way into your house and takes over a room to eat and sleep, you will throw him out.' Salah said the presence of so many soldiers on the Temple Mount was also a violation of its sanctity. 'When I entered Al-Aksa, I saw that it had turned into an army base. That scene was enough to kill the holiness of the place.' He also blamed former prime minister Ehud Barak for allowing Sharon to enter the Temple Mount. Salah, who was on the Temple Mount during Sharon's visit, said the soldiers had refused to allow him to proceed to Al-Aksa, so he began to pray where he was standing, in front of them. He said they started to laugh and mock him. Or demanded to know why Salah believes the police response on the following day, when seven worshippers were killed, was a planned massacre. He said the police had begun shooting before the prayer service inside the mosque was over. He said that whoever gave the order to post police on the Temple Mount one day after Sharon's visit was responsible for the killings. Salah also denied his remarks had inflamed passions in the Israeli Arab sector and had triggered the riots that erupted on October 1. 'My remarks did not cause the Arab sector to get angry, but simply expressed the anger of the Arab sector,' he said. According to Salah, the police were responsible for the violence that erupted on the first day of the riots, when three Israeli Arabs were shot and killed, including two from Umm el-Fahm. When he came down to the main junction, he said, there were few protesters and he intended to order them to go home. Before he could do so, police opened fire with plastic bullets, he said. Asked why the rioters had thrown rocks at the police even though the police had not provoked them, he said it was because the police had acted brutally in previous incidents. In a previous incident, he said, police had opened fire at a high school and a youth had lost an eye. 'The residents lost their faith and began to regard the police as an instrument of repression,' said Salah. Or tried to pin down Salah by asking him to explain some of the apparently anti-Israel terms he has used in his writings in recent years. For example, Salah said in one poem the fate of those who mock and spill the blood of his people is to 'disappear.' 'I wrote that poem after the destruction of the mosque at Sarafan [an Arab village abandoned during the 1948 War of Independence],' said Salah. 'Whoever perpetrated this act is regarded as the successor of the Nakba [the 'catastrophe,' as the Israeli Arabs and Palestinians describe the establishment of Israel], during which entire Arab villages and mosques were destroyed. I stressed that whoever destroys the house of God is an enemy of God and has declared war on a power impossible to vanquish.'
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