Israeli construction hits raw nerve
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 16, 1:43 PM ET
JERUSALEM - No single symbol ignites Middle Eastern emotions more than the rectangle of sacred ground in the heart of Jerusalem known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
An Israeli plan for a new pedestrian walkway up to the hilltop compound has recently become a magnet for Muslim anger. But the rage goes far beyond the construction project — it's about the loaded history and politics of one of the world's most fiercely contested places.
The compound is Islam's third-holiest site, and Muslim leaders are using the walkway controversy to send an unequivocal message to
Israel: hands off.
For 1,300 years, the 35-acre compound in Jerusalem's Old City has been home to the Dome of the Rock, with its intricate mosaic walls and golden cap, and to the black-domed Al Aqsa Mosque. Muslims believe that the site is where Muhammad ascended to heaven in a mystical nighttime journey recounted in the Quran.
The site is Judaism's holiest, marking the place where the first Jewish temple stood until it was destroyed by the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar 2,500 years ago, and where the second stood before being razed by Roman legions in the year 70.
In some Jewish traditions, the hilltop is also where the world was created, where God formed Adam from dust and where the biblical Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice him. Jews have gathered for centuries to pray outside the compound at the Western Wall.
Jews and many Christians believe the site will be the stage for the world's end, when the Messiah will arrive and the temple will be divinely rebuilt.
Israel captured the compound from Jordan in June 1967. Even though Israel left its day-to-day administration in the hands of the Islamic trust known as the Waqf and barred Jews from praying there out of respect for Muslim sensitivities, Jewish sovereignty has been seen by Muslims as an affront to their religion and by Palestinians as a desecration of their most important national symbol. Disagreements over who should control the holy site have played a leading role in scuttling past peace talks.
Muslim anger has repeatedly taken shape in the form of allegations, never substantiated, that Israel is tunneling under the compound to destroy the mosques to make room for the third Jewish temple. In 1990, and again in 1996, similar rumors set off riots that left some 100 people dead, nearly all of them Palestinians.
Two incidents helped fuel those fears. In 1969, a Christian tourist from Australia set fire to the Al Aqsa mosque, hoping to speed the coming of the Messiah. In 1984, Israeli authorities arrested a group of Jewish extremists who had planned to dynamite the Dome of the Rock to expedite the rebuilding of the temple.
The Israeli government's reasons for the new project seemed simple: The existing walkway partially collapsed in a 2004 snowstorm, it was unsafe and it had to be replaced. The structure is meant to serve Jews and tourists. Palestinians enter the compound from elsewhere.
Early this month, when archaeologists began a salvage dig outside the compound's Mughrabi Gate ahead of the walkway's construction, the Waqf claimed it had sovereignty over the ramp because it touched the compound and charged that Israel was harming an integral part of the holy site.
That claim was quickly followed by a more inflammatory charge: The dig was cover for another attempt to tunnel under the Islamic holy places and cause their collapse.
Israel says the accusations are ludicrous and that it notified all relevant parties, including the Waqf, before beginning construction. Muslim officials, however, said they were never consulted.
Adnan Husseini, the Waqf's director, told The Associated Press that there are "ongoing" Israeli attempts to undermine the mosques from below, and that he suspected Israeli archaeologists were currently tunneling underneath the compound.
"We are against all of these excavations, because they threaten the future of the mosque," Husseini said.
Husseini denies that Israel has any rightful claim on the compound, and has questioned the existence of any Jewish history there. A Waqf booklet for tourists says the existence of the temples is supported by "no documented historical or archaeological evidence," a radical view that contradicts the consensus of biblical scholars.
Since the Mughrabi Gate project started, there have been only limited clashes, including a scuffle between police and protesters Friday, and nobody has been seriously hurt.
But Israel has been condemned, reprimanded or warned by nearly every Islamic country. During a trip to Turkey this week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to a suggestion that a Turkish team be allowed to observe the construction work to help calm Muslim fears. Turkey is Israel's closest Muslim ally.
Israel also began broadcasting live images of the work site on the Internet Thursday.
History shows that Israel does not want to harm the Islamic holy sites, said Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli historian and journalist who wrote, "The End of Days," a book about the struggle over the Temple Mount.
In Israel, only an extremist fringe demands the right to pray on the compound, he said, noting that most Orthodox Jews believe it is forbidden to go there before the Messiah arrives. Instead, they pray at the Western Wall.
For Muslims, fears that Israel wants to harm the mosques "fly in the face of their experience of the last 40 years," during which Israel has done nothing to compromise the Muslim holy sites, Gorenberg said.
"But Israel's inability to take those fears into account," he said, "also flies in the face of the experience of the last 40 years."
Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior research fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, noted that when Israeli troops fought their way onto the compound in June 1967, they found an old Arab gatekeeper with a large key around his neck. He opened the Mughrabi Gate, let them out, and showed them the way down to the Western Wall, which was what they were really interested in.
"For the paratroopers, the Mughrabi Gate wasn't a way on to the Temple Mount — it was a way off," Klein Halevi said.
_____
On the Net:
http://www.antiquities.org.il/home_eng.asp