By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries 

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL (ANS) – Security in Jerusalem has been raised to the second highest alert level as a precaution against unrest around the Temple Mount.

A story issued by United Press International (UPI) said, “After some of the worst rioting in Jerusalem in several years, 3,000 police officers were on guard around the Temple Mount because of threats over the construction of a ramp to the area from the Western Wall plaza. “Even entry to Friday prayers at the al-Aksa mosque was restricted to the 50-and-older population, Israeli National News reported.   ”Meanwhile, three Arabs were arrested as they tried to evade the police presence and climb to the mount via the walkway, the only passage where Jews can enter the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. INN reports that the ramp was badly damaged during a snowstorm three years ago and is now being reconstructed.

 ”Meanwhile, three Arabs were arrested as they tried to evade the police presence and climb to the mount via the walkway, the only passage where Jews can enter the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. INN reports that the ramp was badly damaged during a snowstorm three years ago and is now being reconstructed.”As the work was under way, Arab leaders were calling for another intifada to ’save the al-Aqsa Mosque (on the Temple Mount).’”

The UPI story went on to say, “Israeli-Arab Sheikh Raad Salah, who heads the northern branch of the radical Islamic Movement in Israel, has been banned from the Old City for the next couple of months and was charged with attacking a policeman.”

Meanwhile, media sources in the Middle East have reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has agreed to let a Turkish team inspect the construction site at the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, work that had sparked calls for violent attacks on Israel from Muslim clerics and Islamic nations.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Olmert had shown him photographs of the preservation and repair work, but had failed to convince him that it was not harming the al-Aqsa Mosque. Olmert said he agreed to the inspection because “Israel has nothing to hide.”

Israel has now begun operating live Internet cameras at the Temple Mount construction site.