Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

664 • TERRA LLIUREwith machine guns and crowbars attempting to break into the TempleMount area, while another 35 people suspected of involvement werearrested shortly afterward. On 27 January 1984 another group of sixto eight Jewish extremists, known as the Lifta Band, attempted toenter the compound with 36 pounds of explosives, 22 assault rifles,dozens of grenades, and 12 mortar rounds. After Israeli securityforces apprehended all of the people involved in this plot, they recoveredup to 250 pounds of explosives. These various extremist groupsbelieved that this Muslim shrine, which is the third-holiest place inIslam after the Ka’ba in Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet inMedina, had to be destroyed to clear the site on the Temple Mount forthe construction of a Third Temple on the site of the Second Templedestroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. The conspirators consideredthis to be necessary in order to facilitate the advent of the promisedMessiah, who would inaugurate the Jewish millennial kingdom thatthey believed was prophesied in scripture. Such an event would alsoalmost certainly have triggered another Arab-Israeli war, which variousJewish Underground extremists also hoped for as they believedthis would allow for the expulsion of all Arabs and other non-Jewsfrom the biblical Eretz Yisrael. See also MILLENNIALISM.TERRA LLIURE (TL). “Free Land” was a left-wing Catalan group withthe goal of reconstituting an independent Catalan homeland in Cataloniathat would embrace also the Spanish provinces of Valencia and theBalearic Isles as well as the French province of Roussillon. Formed inthe 1970s, it undertook a terrorist campaign in May 1981, shooting aprofessor of Spanish in Barcelona in the legs. That year the TL also explodedsmall bombs in foreign-owned banks and travel agencies in thecities of Alicante, Barcelona, Tarragona, and Valencia, until December1981, when Spanish police arrested some of its members.On 25 July 1987, the last day to file personal income tax returnsin Spain, the TL bombed the Finance Ministry office in the BasqueProvince town of Igualada. Five policemen were wounded alongwith the local tax commissioner and two civilians. The TL has alsoclaimed credit for the 1987 bombings in Barcelona of the U.S. consulategeneral and a United Service Organizations (USO) club, forwhich credit was also claimed by the Red Army for the Liberationof Catalonia, a radical TL splinter group. The last known attack bythe group was on 2 March 1989 involving the attempted bombing of