Mideast: Even Rachel Gets No Rest

The Israeli Security Cabinet decided Wednesday that Rachel's Tomb, a disputed West Bank site holy to both Jews and Muslims, will remain under Israeli control.

Jews believe the biblical matriarch Rachel, wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph, was buried at the site, located in Bethlehem about 500 yards from the city's border with Jerusalem. Muslims say there was once a mosque there.

Palestinian neighborhoods, a refugee camp and an Islamic cemetery are located near or next to Rachel's Tomb. Jewish pilgrims have in the past flocked to the tomb to pray and seek blessings, but during the two years of Mideast fighting such visits have become rare.

Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the tomb would stay under Israeli control in an emerging plan to ring Jerusalem with walls, fences and roadblocks.

Gissin said ensuring access to the site from Jerusalem did not necessarily require taking any territory. One possibility, he said, was a bridge from the existing city limits of Jerusalem to Rachel's Tomb. "The security establishment must now come back with solutions," he said.

"It's not an annexation - it's securing a Jewish site with a secure passage to it," Gissin told The Associated Press. "It's one of the most holy sites to Jews."

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the problem was to secure the right of Jews to pray at the site, while trying to avoid political complications.

"I'm happy that at the end we succeeded in focusing the debate on security issues," he told reporters at an academic conferencein Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.

The stone compound also has been a point of conflict between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen. Israelis who guard the holy place must cross Palestinian-controlled areas to get to the tomb and have been shot at frequently.

Wednesday's announcement was made as part of continued deliberations about Israel's effort to build a defensive barrier around Jerusalem to prevent Palestinian militants from infiltrating and carrying out attacks.

The plan has angered Palestinians because it would fence in the Arab-populated areas of Jerusalem, adding them to the Israeli side. Israel captured the Arab section of the city in the 1967 war and later annexed it. Palestinians hope to establish a state with the Arab part of Jerusalem as its capital.

Palestinian officials were not available for comment on the decision. However, when the plan was first publicized last month, Bethlehem Mayor Hana Nasser denounced it. He said the tomb and the surrounding area should be under Palestinian control.

"All these unilateral measures violate United Nations resolutions and all the peace agreements," Nasser said.

Wednesday's announcement suggested to some that authorities were considering further expanding Jerusalem's borders to include Rachel's Tomb.

Israelis were to be granted free access to Rachel's Tomb as part of interim peace accords, "but experience has shown us that in the past they (the Palestinians) didn't respect this," Gissin said.

By Jamey Keaten