Last update - 00:00 15/02/2007
A Bailey bridge on the ramp
By Meron Benvenisti
The Mugrabi bridge fiasco is the object of such misunderstanding, criticism and derision that the most important point has been blurred: Our national and security interests are best served by preserving safe and easy access to the Mugrabi Gate, with the keys in the hands of the Israel Police.
Any renunciation of this would severely violate the status quo on the Temple Mount and its surroundings, thus increasing the danger of future bloodshed.
In other times, when other leaders ruled in Israel, the crisis would have been solved in one day. The defense minister would order the Engineering Corps to set up a portable Bailey bridge on the existing ramp, after bolstering it. Only then would the fighting over the desirable architectural form begin.
But when the Mugrabi Gate and the access to it become a ball in the game of people with political, religious, architectural and archaeological agendas, and no single body is responsible or able to make decisions, everything gets complicated.
A decade ago, Sheikh Raad Salah detected the rift in the Israeli establishment and its weak position on Temple Mount. He started a revolution on and beneath the mount plaza. Now Salah sees the divisions over the Western Wall plaza and is challenging the status quo there, too.
His obvious intention is to restore exclusive control of Temple Mount to the Muslim authorities and revoke the arrangements that have existed there since 1967. These arrangements have withstood bloody tests and are accepted as a stable status quo.
To judge by Israel's reactions, Salah is succeeding. Those who will pay the price for the militant national religious incitement are the residents of East Jerusalem, most of them bystanders, and Israel's Arab citizens, for his deliberate radicalization will foil efforts for a Jewish-Arab dialogue.
Salah's provocation is too blatant to be left without a harsh government reaction. But the Western Wall rabbi and the mayor of Jerusalem have already taken fright and hastened to put off the bridge's erection until the city master plan is confirmed. For years they have been exerting pressure to get rid of the Mugrabi ramp irritation. Removing it would expand the prayer area in the Western Wall plaza. It would also stop what they see as the "disgrace" of Jews violating the Torah prohibition to go to Temple Mount from the Western Wall plaza.
The people represented by the Western Wall rabbi and mayor have no interest in preserving free access for Jews and tourists to the Temple Mount. If the legal procedures take a long time now and Jews do not visit the mount - so much the better. There would be fewer people violating the Torah prohibition.
This attitude explains why the bridge was planned to be so long and begins at the Dung Gate. It cuts off the rise to the Temple Mount from the Western Wall plaza.
The plan of the new bridge, which stretches like a thin spider web along the massive Western Wall layers, justifiably provoked the wrath of the planners and archaeologists. The excavation for the bridge posts provided a focus for Muslim protests. The resulting political, bureaucratic and religious entanglements have little to do with the Mugrabi Gate itself.
We could continue wallowing in this mud, or we could take swift and resolute action. We could return the earth dug out of the Mugrabi ramp, reinforce its walls, instruct the Engineering Corps to immediately put up a Bailey bridge to replace the rickety one and dispatch police forces for protection from the zealots. If, of course, someone capable of acting quick-wittedly and firmly could be found.