Cairo’s criticism sharpened on Monday, when the Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister, Fathi Shazli, said Mr Netanyahu needed a psychiatrist to treat his “sick fears on security”. Unesco has endorsed the Palestinian view.The Israeli timing looks like another example of Mr Netanyahu’s left hand not knowing, or perhaps not caring, what the right hand is doing. Muslim authorities feared the Jews were trying to take over the Temple Mount from underneath. The victorious Israeli defence minister, Moshe Dayan, deliberately left the Mount in Muslim hands after the 1967 war. In fact, as Dan Bahat, a former Jerusalem district supervisor of archaeology, said recently: “There are not, and never have been, any excavations on or under the Temple Mount.” Palestinians were also worried about damage to medieval Muslim buildings still standing above the tunnel None has been destroyed, but some have suffered cracks. The door will serve as the exit to a tourist and pilgrim route, displaying Jewish, Muslim and early-Christian masonry along a buried extension of the retaining wall Herod built for his Jewish Temple.The oldest structure dates back to the Hasmonean kings in the second century BC.The Palestinians have consistently opposed the excavations. A door was cut at the Via Dolorosa end three years ago, but the then Labour government kept it sealed for fear of provoking the Palestinians.Mr Netanyahu’s coalition of right-wing and religious parties authorised it to be opened after the Yom Kippur fast on Monday night.

Mr Netanyahu thinks the peace process is peace for the Israelis, but not for the Palestinians and the other Arabs He is not treating us as partners. He is telling us we can go to hell.”
Israel’s Religious Affairs Ministry began excavating the controversial tunnel in 1968, a year after Israeli troops conquered the Old City, and finished digging in 1985. “Such actions,” Dr Erakat told The Independent, “don’t leave a peace process to speak about The policy of this Israeli government is the fait accompli. The Palestinians’ chief negotiator, Saeb Erakat, warned the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that he was pushing Israelis and Palestinians towards confrontation and disaster.

Arab youths clashed with police and threw stones at Jews praying at the Wall. Yasser Arafat summoned his Palestinian cabinet into emergency session last night amid demands to boycott the next round of peace negotiations, due to begin tomorrow. Palestinian shop-keepers in the old walled city of Jerusalem rolled down their shutters yesterday in protest at Israel’s completion of a 400-yard archaeological tunnel which passes from the Jewish Wailing Wall under the Muslim quarter and comes out in the Christian Via Dolorosa. Mayor Lieven Lenaerts was accused of using false accounting to secure up to 15 million francs (pounds 300,000) in EU funding for an organization called the Union of European Middle Classes. Belgian anti-fraud investigators suspect Mr Lenaerts, president of the organisation, used the money for himself

AP – Brussels.

Yannos Papandoniou retained his post as national economy minister as well as being given the finance ministry. Simitis’s boldest move was to remove Gerasimos Arsenis, an old-guard socialist, from the defence ministry and replace him with Akis Tsohatzopoulos. He challenged Simitis for the party leadership in June, and lost, but has since strongly supported the new premier

Reuter – Athens. The mayor of the Belgian city of Sint Niklaas, a leading official of the Benelux economic union, was arrested on charges of defrauding the EU. The Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis, kept the backbone of his economic team when he named his new socialist cabinet but chose a different defence minister to oversee plans to beef up the military. Police confirmed the girl had been abused before being strangled.

“We must make use of all legal possibilities to protect our children,” said Bavaria’s Prime Minister, Edmund Stoiber, who announced that Bavaria would back Draconian punishments for sexual offenders.
In Bonn, the federal youth minister, Claudia Nolte, urged “chemical cast ration” for rapists.Imre Karacs – Bonn. The accused is a known child molester, and the public was horrified to discover that he had been released last year from prison, nearly two years before his rape sentence was due to expire. Natalie Astner was kidnapped on her way to school last Friday in the Bavarian village of Epfach. The chief suspect, a 27-year-old electrician, confessed to kidnap and murder and led police to her naked body in a nearby river. Senior German politicians called for the compulsory castration of sex offenders yesterday, after the abduction and brutal murder of a seven-year-old girl at the weekend. It is vitally important to Israel but I think it is also vitally important to the Palestinians.