Last update - 02:26 07/02/2007
Controversy in the Old City / 'Defend al-Aqsa campaign' strikes again
For nearly 40 years, Islam has been setting off alarm bells every time Israel digs or builds near the Temple Mount. Israel is almost always denounced as planning to undermine the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, and replace them with the Third Temple. And this is almost always a barefaced lie.
Almost always, because there was one time, at the beginning of the 1980s, when the Religious Affairs Ministry burst out of the depths of the Western Wall tunnel to another tunnel that led eastward, toward the ground beneath the Temple Mount. The rabbi of the Western Wall at the time, Yehuda Meir Getz, believed he had managed to discover the whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant. Menachem Begin rushed to cool Getz's ardor and ordered that the tunnel opening be sealed.
Since then, there has been no digging in the direction of the Temple Mount, and there are no plans to do so.
Indeed, all Israeli authorities involved with this sensitive site are very careful not to stray from the Western Wall area, whether in connection with the wall's tunnels, the City of David or the Muslim Quarter.
All the same, Palestinian and other Muslim leaders yesterday condemned Israeli excavation work near the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Israel Antiquities Authority has authorized plans for a bridge to connect the Dung Gate in Jerusalem's Old City to the Mugrabi Gate, located next to the Western Wall and leading to the Temple Mount. The campaign to "defend Al-Aqsa" is not based on facts, but on the political and/or religious needs of its leaders.
The Muslim connection to the Temple Mount is generally rhetorical, but sometimes is financial. Over the last few years, Israeli Arabs - especially members of the Islamic Movement in Israel - have become more involved in the fight over the Temple Mount, and have accumulated more credit in Palestinian and Israeli Arab public opinion, regardless of the facts on the ground.
The Islamic Movement, which is once again leading the "defend Al-Aqsa" campaign, initiated the construction of an underground mosque in the Solomon's Stables area about 10 years ago. Recently the movement declared the establishment of a global caliphate, based - where else? - in Jerusalem.
Since the unification of Jerusalem in 1967, Arab leaders have found it in their interest to refer to Temple Mount mosques being desecrated by the Jews and to raise money to maintain and renovate the compound. Any access to the sacred site is interpreted as part of the national and religious struggle against Israel.
The use of religious symbols to further political goals was not invented by Islam, but it is difficult to discuss the ongoing Arab nationalist struggle in Israel without referring to the religious symbols that have nourished it, especially after the Six-Day War. Muslim religious rulings that have been published over the last four decades refer to Jewish-Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem as defiling the city's Muslim character.
Muslim religious and academic scholars rewrite the city's history. They deny the existence of the first and second temples in Jerusalem, and even argue that the mosques on the Temple Mount preceded the presence of Judaism in Jerusalem.