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Commentary;
For previous posts on Kever Rachel, click here. If only Arabs had been denied free access to the area bordering the Kever complex, perhaps then the walling, isolation and difficulty of Jewish access to the Kever initiated by Sharon and further implemented by Olmert would not be. MB
Hanan Porat: MK Porush Saved Rachel’s Tomb
Full Text;
Former MK Hanan Porat spoke to Arutz Sheva on Wednesday, describing the importance of Rachel’s Tomb (Kever Rachel) to the Jewish people and expressing regret that Israeli control in Bethlehem is limited. Porat remembered how he and MK Meir Porush (UTJ) convinced then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin to keep Rachel’s Tomb under Jewish control during the Oslo Accords, after Rabin had promised control of the area to former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
According to Porat, he had asked to meet with Rabin during his time as an MK and had argued that the tomb must remain under Israeli control. Rabin was not entirely convinced, Porat said, when MK Porush, who had joined the meeting at the last minute, grabbed Rabin and began shaking him, saying,
“Reb Yitzchak it’s Mother Rachel!” and bursting into tears. Rabin turned pale and promised to reconsider the issue. “I saw that in light of that cry there was some sort of political turnaround,” Porat said. If the tomb had been given to the PA, he said, “its fate would be that of Joseph’s Tomb,” which has been repeatedly vandalized and burned over the past several years.