Discovering MENA and other thoughts

Should Jews be allowed free access to pray at  Haram Al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary , one of Islam's holiest sites? The Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third most sacred site in Islam, adjoins the Western Wall and stands on what Jews insist are the first and second temples. Haram Al-Sharif has been an exclusively Islamic shrine since the Arab conquest of Palestine in the 7th century AD, but the mosque was built upon the Temple Mount, itself one of Judaism's most sacred sites. The Western Wall, the only remnant of the Jewish temple destroyed by Herod in 70 AD, is under direct Israeli control, and Jewish prayer has always been allowed there. Even Christians revere the site they consider the place where Jesus walked and reasoned with the rabbis — as well as chastised the Pharisees and money changers. The compound has been under factual if not legal Israeli sovereignty since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, and is the holiest site in Judaism. That´s not the case of Haram Al-Shari...

A worrying, although too familiar, bout of violence has erupted in the West Bank, over the death of a Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody. Although Israel denies any kind of wrongdoing in the face of accusations of torture by the victim-s interrogators, Palestinian authorities have called for an international objective inquiry into this death.