Close to 2,000 Jews showed up last night at a special rally on behalf of the holiest site in Judaism: the Temple Mount. The participants demanded that Prime Minister Sharon finally open the site to Jewish visitors. "For two years we have waited for the Prime Minister," MK Uri Ariel told the crowd. "We talked with him, and received promises from him - but nothing happened. In the name of the People of Israel, we turn from here to the government and to the man who stands at its head, and say: This is your primary obligation! Whoever does not fulfill this primary obligation will not receive the confidence of the nation [in the next election]. There is no justification for us, with the great army, police, and security forces that we have, not to be in full sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Mr. Prime Minister, we are with you in opening the Temple Mount! Just like you closed Orient House [illegal PA headquarters in Jerusalem] and no one remembers it any more - so too, open the Temple Mount so that the Jewish nation will be sovereign there! We hope that in the near future, we will in fact actualize our full sovereignty there, and that the government and the Prime Minister will not force us to begin a widespread public campaign in order for that to happen speedily in our days."



Deputy Minister of Absorption Yuli Edelstein also spoke: "We often lately ask wryly if the Temple Mount is truly in our hands or not. My answer is this: The Temple Mount is in our hearts! We must always remember this, and if it truly is in our hearts, then it will remain in our hands as well." Likud MK Eli Cohen and the National Religious Party's Rabbi Yitzchak Levy spoke as well.