USA - President Trump may have all the good intentions in the world for making a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, but it won't happen unless there's a revolution in Islamic thought, a leading Middle East scholar said. But Harold Rhode, a leading Middle East expert, said it's not so simple. Rhode lived and studied at universities in the Islamic world for years and spent nearly three decades advising the US Defense Department on Islamic Affairs.
Rhode points to former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's reaction to the deal offered to him by then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000. "Barak offers Yasser Arafat absolutely everything in the West Bank and as it came [to] the Temple Mount – which we know in the Bible there were two Jewish Temples there – Barak said, 'you get the top of the Temple Mount where your mosques, your holy places are, we get below because those are the archaeological remnants, but it's in return for a peace agreement,'"
Rhode said. "Arafat, who could do things much more in the name of the people here than Mahmoud Abbas, jumps up, starts to shake and said, 'there never was a Jewish Temple here!'" he explained. Rhode referred to a pamphlet by the Muslim Wafk (Islamic trust), which oversees the al-Aksa Mosque and Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, written in the 1920s. It stated that there's no doubt Solomon's Temple was on the Temple Mount.
Rhode also said while the Palestinians may be willing at some point to recognize the country of Israel, they won't recognize it as a Jewish state because that would contradict their religion. "If they recognize it as a Jewish state, they're denying the basic Muslim idea that once land is conquered by Muslims, it's Muslim forever," he said. "That is a huge violation of Islam. It's a violation of your personal honor, they say. It's apostasy and punishable by death."