And Now They're Not Lying

A headline in Ynet today notes that the Arabs now claim that Ehud Olmert has decided to surrender control of the Temple Mount to the them as part of a final peace arrangement. They go on to say that the only reason this hasn't been made public is to keep the coalition in the dark so Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu don't bolt and cause Kadima to lose its majority.

I don't think there's a reason to panic here. First of all, any agreement Olmert signs must go before the Knesset and if that's one of the details, it will certainly come out then. Something as big as a final peace deal betwen Israel and the Arabs will not slip secretly through.

Besides, this has already been tried before. Remember that Ehud Barak also negotiated the surrender of the Temple Mount at Camp David in 2000. He produced a strange agreement that would have seen Jews allowed to use the outer half of the Western Wall while the inner half would belong to Arafat, y"sh.

Just as happened then, I have great hopes that God will harden the hearts of our enemies and, when presented with all their demands, they will still turn them down, demanding more.

May we merit God's protection in this.