**The move comes after Palestinian rioters set alight Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (Shechem) last night, a site claimed as sacred by both Jews and Muslims.
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Jerusalem, October 16 - Religious leaders at Al Aqsa Mosque are planning to burn down the shrine to prevent Jews from desecrating the site with what Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called their "filthy feet." The move comes after Palestinian rioters set alight Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (Shechem) last night, a site claimed as sacred by both Jews and Muslims.
For months, tensions at Al Aqsa and its environs, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, have remained high. Despite repeated Israeli assurances that they do not intend to change the decades-old arrangement on the Mount that forbids non-Muslim prayer, there have been almost daily, often violent, disturbances amid accusations that Israel intends to alter the status quo and to replace the Islamic buildings on the site with the Third Temple. Attacks on Jews by knife-wielding Palestinians have occurred almost every day in the last two weeks, with Al Aqsa featured prominently in Palestinian media and incitement, which exhorts them to defend the place from Jewish "desecration" and "settlers" who "storm" Al Aqsa, referring to groups of tourists who walk around certain parts of the Temple Mount.
The site known as Joseph's Tomb in Palestinian-controlled Nablus has also been the site of clashes, but access to Jews there is even further restricted, with one approved visit under IDF escort once a month, in the middle of the night. The visits are usually greeted by Palestinian riots, but the violence is not confined to the presence of Jews. On several occasions local rioters have broken into and vandalized the site, which Palestinians claim is not the burial place of the Biblical patriarch Joseph, but of a medieval sheikh by that name. If burning down the tomb works to keep out the unwanted Jews, reasoned the Al Aqsa custodians, then a similar approach at the Jerusalem mosque - the third-holiest site in Islam - should yield the desired results.
Complicating matters, notes Waqf official Krimnal Arsan, is the difficulty of obtaining the right materials to set the mosque alight such that its destruction is assured. "The Occupation forces have been restricting access to men over the age of forty, out of fear of more protests," he said. "We used to bring in fireworks and plenty of other incendiary materials, but those are basically gone now that they've been used against police and Jewish visitors. We're going to have to smuggle in the stuff that's strong enough to ignite a big fire."
Arsan expects Jews to stop trying to visit the site after the mosque is burned down, because Jews quickly forget about structures in the Temple Mount that are destroyed.