The Hullalabaloo on the Temple Mount

So,what's with the Temple Mount?

Images for which we have no nostalgia have beeen splashed across screens and front pages all over the world depicting violent clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators in Jerusalem. And why? The Moslems are frenzied over what they claim is yet another Israeli conspiracy to undermine the foundations of the Temple Mount.

The hysteria is being generated by the northern branch of the Israeli Islamic organization led by one Raed Salah. In contrast to its relatively moderate southern branch, the northern group tilts very dangerously toward Islamic extremism and harbors little affection for the state whose citizenship its members hold. Raed Salah has made the liberation of El Aktsa (aka the Temple Mount) his flagship cause and consistently casts about for molehills to transform into mountains.

In this case, the excavation work on the bridge leading up to the Mugrabi Gate of the Temple Mount proved to be a choice opportunity to stir up the masses. Although the bridge runs perpendicular to the Temple Mount and is not a supporting structure, Salah wasted no time in declaring yet another Israeli scheme to cause its collapse, conveniently invoking the ire of the entire Moslem world.

In light of some possible confusion here are some facts worth reviewing:
-the Temple Mount is a large, flat platform surrounded by four retaining walls. It was built by King Herod about two thousand years ago.
-The original hilltop was occupied by several different buildings: King Solomon's Temple (approx. 960 BCE); the rebuilt second Temple (517 BCE); Herod's Temple (18 BCE); a pagan platofrm built by the Romans (135 CE) and finally the Dome of the Rock (691 CE) and the El Aktsa Mosque (720 CE), both Moslem buildings which were briefly transformed into churches during the Crusader reign of Jerusalem (1099-1187) and which remain on the platform until today.
-Modern Israel regained control of the Temple Mount during the Six Day War, exactly 1897 years after the Temple was destroyed for the second and final time. Although the Jewish return to the Temple Mount in 1967 was an important milestone in the rebuilding of Jewish spiritual independence, a decision was made immediately after the war to leave the jurisdiction of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Moslems. Practically the Israeli leadership at the time understood the far-reaching implications any changes in the area would have, but equally important in the formulation of Israeli policy was the rabbinic directive for a complete Jewish hands-off. Our tradition, which is not an unifluential element here and is always taken into deep consideration regarding issues of a spiritual nature, says that the Temple will be rebuilt only when the messiah comes. Until that momentous era arrives not so much as a single pebble may be removed from there in preparation. In light of these considerations the jurisdiction over the entire Temple Mount was left in the hands of the Waqf, the Moslem trust, where it remains until this day. The Temple Mount was in our hands, but we gave it back.

Israel has no interest in changing the status quo to the benefit or detriment of either party. Can any rational person suggest what Israel would gain by causing the collapse of the Temple Mount? In fact, I can't think of a bigger headache. We need a collapsed mosque like we need a hole in the head, not to mention World War III, which would no doubt be soon in coming.

What's interesting to note is that in the frenetic negotiations following the collapse of the Camp David Summit in August of 2000 a discussion was held over the division of Jerusalem. Israel was prepared to cede the Temple Mount to the Palestinians, with the Western Wall remaining in Jewish Jerusalem. We asked, however, for a symbolic presence on the Temple Mount to represent the site's sanctity to the Jewish faith, a request which was flatly rejected on the grounds of historical inaccuracy. Raed Salah and various other Islamic leaders have publically proclaimed on numerous occasions that the Dome of the Rock and the El Aktsa mosque predate Jesus, Herod and Solomon. In their revised version of history the Jewish people have been conviently written out of the story and hence have no claim to the hilltop. My inclination has always been to view this laughable attempt to rewrite history as an embarrasment to the Moslem religious establishment, but clearly our Arab neighbors don't share my sense of humor. Rather, they view anything understood by Israel as truth to be a conspiracy of lies, regardless of the science, scholarship and international consensus that stand behind it. This unqualified distrust of Israel by the Arab masses (perhaps understandable to a certain extent) is, however, a powerful tool in the hands of a charismatic leader like Raed Salah and is not to be underestimated. The Arab mob can be mobilized in a very short time simply by rumor and violence often ensues, even if the hoardes aren't exactly sure why they have been called out to the streets. Rarely do those leaders take responsibility for happens next.

So what do we do - stop the bulldozers? Absolutely not. An in-depth examination of the nearly forty years the Temple Mount has been under Israeli sovereignty will show that the sanctity of the Moslem holy sites and the Temple Mount has been consistently respected and preserved . Israel has the legitimate right to make physical changes in the area around the Temple Mount in order to facilitate better access for visitors to both the Mugrabi Gate and the Southern Wall excavations. To stop the digging in order to avoid Moslem violence would be to sell the Jewish hsitoric and religious significance of the Temple Mount very cheaply.