In The Days

• Author: Bill Koenig
• Source: Watch
• News Date: 8/31/07

Aug. 28, 2007, had very revealing headlines:
Blood-Red Moon Rises over North America, Olmert Offers Temple Mount Sovereignty to the Palestinians, Olmert and Abbas Meet on Israel’s Land and Jerusalem, Bush Says Iran’s Actions Could Lead to a Shadow of a Nuclear Holocaust, and Bush Arrives in New Orleans for his 15th Post-Katrina Visit

Israel in the Last Days

“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.”
— Zec 12:2

Signs in the Sun, Moon and Stars

“And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;”
—Revelation 6:12

These were the news headlines on the day of a total lunar eclipse that produced a “blood-red” moon, the second one in seven years. The last total lunar eclipse/”blood-red” moon occurred on July 16, 2000, while U.S. President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat were at the Middle East Summit at Camp David. The sticking point that caused the summit to fail had to do with who would have sovereignty over the Temple Mount — the Israelis or the Palestinian Arabs.
During this year’s total lunar eclipse/”blood-red” moon of Aug. 28, 2007, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians sovereignty over the Temple Mount. What was so incredible about the timing of this offer is that it didn’t take place days, weeks or months after the “blood-red” moon but on the very same day. In other words, the Temple Mount was a central focus during both total lunar eclipse/ “blood-red” moons in 2000 and this week.
In 2000, Ehud Barak didn’t want to give the Palestinians sovereignty over the Temple Mount — which was the main reason for the failure of the Middle East Camp David Summit. And Olmert has offered the Palestinians sovereignty over the Temple Mount in 2007.
Blood-Red Moon
The Old and New Testaments speak of blood-red moons prior to the Tribulation.
Joel 2:31 (KJV) The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD come.
Acts 2:20 (KJV) The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come.
The Jewish Talmud (book of tradition/interpretation) says, “When the moon is in eclipse, it is a bad omen for Israel. If its face is as red as blood, the sword is coming to the world.”
Total-eclipse “blood-red” moons are rare. The next total-eclipse “blood-red” moon will occur on Feb. 21, 2008. Having another total eclipse this close to a previous one is extremely rare; to say the least, we will be watching that day with much interest.
News From the Last Two Blood-Red Moons
During the “blood-red” moon of July 16, 2007, President Clinton, Prime Minister Barak and President Arafat were participating in the Middle East Summit at Camp David from July 11-25.
According to Mitchell Bard, the executive director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE), Prime Minister Barak offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip. In addition, he agreed to dismantle 63 isolated settlements. In exchange for the 5 percent annexation of the West Bank, Israel would increase the size of the Gaza territory by roughly a third.
Bard said Barak also made previously unthinkable concessions on Jerusalem, agreeing that Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new Palestinian state.
The Barak proposal also addressed the refugee issue, guaranteeing them the right of return to the Palestinian state and reparations from an international fund that would be collected to compensate them.
Barak began referring to the ‘Holy of Holies’ (Aryeh Dayan, Ha’aretz)
In early September 2000, about two months after Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat returned empty-handed from the failed summit at Camp David, a series of clandestine meetings was held in Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians. Most of them took place in an isolated private home in the western Jerusalem suburb of Ein Karem and were meant to find a formula that would resolve the harsh dispute that broke out at the summit around the future of the Temple Mount.
The talks were held at the home of Dr. Moshe Amirav, the man who was appointed the day after the Camp David debacle as the prime minister’s adviser on the issue of a permanent settlement in Jerusalem. He continued to serve in this capacity through the Taba talks, and until Barak left the Prime Minister’s office.
Seated alongside Amirav during some of the conversations was Danny Yatom, who headed the political-security staff at the Prime Minister’s office at the time. In these conversations, the late Faisal Husseini, who headed the Palestinian negotiating team on Jerusalem, represented the Palestinians.
The dispute over the Temple Mount had nothing to do with practical arrangements that would be implemented there. The crux of the dispute centered on sovereignty, and nothing else. While Arafat demanded that the entire Temple Mount — Haram al-Sharif in Arab terminology — would be under full and exclusive sovereignty of the Palestinians, Barak demanded that partial sovereignty over the site — which, to the disbelief of several of his colleagues in the Israeli delegation, he suddenly began to call “The Holy of Holies” — would remain in Israel’s possession.
Amirav and Husseini, whose Ein Karem conversations took place with Barak and Arafat’s knowledge, worked out a formula that both men believed would be able to circumvent this difference of opinion.
According to the proposal they drafted, the United Nations would establish a “commonwealth of states,” in whose hands the Temple Mount would be entrusted. This commonwealth of nations would have 11 member states: the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian state that would be established as part of the peace treaty and Israel.
Ongoing administration of the Temple Mount, stated the document, would remain in the Waqf’s domain, and Yasser Arafat “could be the guardian of the sites holy to Islam.”
The Temple Mount, claims Amirav, is what prevented the sides from reaching agreement.
“The Camp David summit,” explained Amirav in conversation with Ha’aretz, “became a ‘Jerusalem summit,’ perhaps even a ‘Temple Mount summit.’” The three leaders who took part — Barak, Arafat and their host, U.S. President Bill Clinton — devoted, claims Amirav, “hundreds of hours” to discussions on Jerusalem in general and the Temple Mount in particular. “It may be hard to believe,” says Amirav, “but Clinton himself spent hours poring over maps with Barak and Arafat.”
It was Arafat’s and Barak’s stubborn insistence on sovereignty that prevented an agreement. Arafat insisted on full and exclusive Palestinian sovereignty “both because he wanted to go down in history as having liberated the Temple Mount and because he wanted the Temple Mount to provide a pan-Muslim counterweight to the little State of Palestine.”
Barak insisted on it “because he wanted to go down in history as having achieved for Israel that which it does not now have — sovereignty over part of the Temple Mount.”
But Barak wanted to go down in Jewish history as the man who gave Israel sovereignty, if only partial, over the Temple Mount.
Moshe Amirav calls this a “groundless assertion.” He says in exchange for conceding the Temple Mount, Israel could have received the recognition of the entire world — including the Arab and Muslim world — both of its sovereign existence and Jerusalem as its capital. Sooner or later, he says, Israel will be forced to “get rid of the Temple Mount.” He proposes that Israel “give the Temple Mount as a gift, not to Arafat, but to the leaders of the countries of Islam.” If it does so, he believes Israel will receive the recognition of the entire Muslim world.
Olmert Offers Palestinians Temple Mount Sovereignty
Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily reported that on Tuesday, Aug. 28, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented the Palestinian Authority with a formal plan in which the Jewish state would forfeit the Temple Mount — Judaism’s holiest site — to Muslim control, according to top Palestinian sources.
WND reported the sources said Olmert’s plan calls for the entire Temple Mount plaza to fall under Arab sovereignty; Jerusalem’s Old City holy sites near the Mount to be governed by a Jewish, Christian and Muslim task force; and the Western Wall plaza below the Mount to be controlled by Israel.
According to Palestinian negotiators who took part in the Olmert-Abbas meeting, the Israeli leader also presented Abbas with a plan for Israel to evacuate most of the West Bank and cede eastern sections of Jerusalem. The plan called for Israel to retain three main settlement blocks; in exchange, Israel would offer the Palestinians Israeli-Arab towns in the north of the country, the Palestinian negotiators told WND.
David Baker, a spokesman for Olmert, would neither confirm nor deny to WND that the Prime Minister offered the Temple Mount.
Bush, Iran and Katrina
Later on Tuesday, Aug. 28, President George W. Bush told the 89th Annual Convention of the American Legion in Nevada:
Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.
Bush also said, “We seek to advance a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians so they can live side by side in peace and security. We seek justice and dignity and human rights for all the people of the Middle East.”
In another very symbolic and relevant irony, President Bush arrived in New Orleans later that day for his 15th trip to survey rebuilding progress on the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which occurred on the heels of the expulsion of 9,500 Jews from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria.
The White House reported that the federal government has provided more than $114 billion for relief, recovery and rebuilding efforts — over $96 billion of which has been disbursed, or is available for, the states to draw from.
Summary
We know the Bush Administration seems committed to a peace deal before they leave office. In Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s keynote message to the American Task Force on Palestine Inaugural Gala, “Helping Palestinians Build a Better Future,” given in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 11, 2006, she stated:
I can only tell you that I, too, have a personal commitment to that goal because I believe that there could be no greater legacy for America than to help to bring into being a Palestinian state for a people who have suffered too long, who have been humiliated too long, who have not reached their potential for too long, and who have so much to give to the international community and to all of us. I promise you my personal commitment to that goal.
Israel’s secular leadership of Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres are leading their nation into a very dangerous position, not to forget the role George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice are playing. Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem must not be divided, and the Temple Mount must not be given to Israel’s enemies.
As I have shown over and over again in my book, Eye to Eye — Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel, the future doesn’t look good for those who attempt to divide God’s covenant land and interfere with His plan for the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.