Jerusalem - Israeli police said yesterday they were holding two Jewish extremists who were suspected of planning to throw a pig's head into an Islamic shrine in Arab East Jerusalem in order to provoke clashes between Arabs and Jews. A police spokesman said the suspects, Mr Avigdor Eskin and Mr Haim Pakovich, arrested earlier this week, planned to carry out their action during Islam's holy fasting month of Ramadan, which begins next week.
"If this plan would have been put into action, I think a lot of blood, both Jewish and Arab, would have been spilt on the Temple Mount," said a Jerusalem police commander. The Temple Mount complex in Jerusalem's Old City houses the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest shrine. Mr Eskin was sentenced to four months in prison earlier this year for putting a Jewish curse on the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, a month before he was assassinated in 1995.