For the past 40 years, right-wing and religious organizations have been mourning the absence of the Temple Mount from our national and religious life in addition to the Temple's destruction. In what has become a ritual, they lament the destruction of the antiquities on the mount and complain about the impotence of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the humiliating entrance conditions and turning empty areas on the mount into Muslim prayer sites.

These groups say there is a vacuum as far as sovereignty, government, law and order on Temple Mount are concerned. They say they are frustrated again and again by the authorities' lies and broken promises.

They are usually right. The only problem is that the politicians, archaeologists or even the police were not the first to give up Temple Mount. The rabbis were the ones to do so, as early as 1967. Even a decade later, when Menachem Begin wanted to change the status quo on Temple Mount to enable Jews to pray there, the rabbis would not allow it. They threatened him with boycotts and coalition crises.

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When Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun complained to Begin on the goings on at Temple Mount, Begin sent him away angrily, saying "go to your rabbis."

Even figures like Colonel Motta Gur ("Temple Mount is in our hands!") and Yaakov Hazan (the late Mapam leader), who wanted to integrate the Jewish interest in the political agreements on Temple Mount, had no chance. The sweeping halakhic prohibition imposed by ultra-Orthodox rabbis and religious Zionist rabbis on entering Temple Mount prevented, and still prevents, the full exercise of Jewish or Israeli sovereignty over it.

This prohibition has been convenient for Israel's governments, all of which banned Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount (with the exception of visits) for reasons of preserving public order and preventing conflict.

Even Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the leader of the settlers movement, denied Jews entry to Temple Mount. Only recently has a group of religious-Zionist rabbis dared to change a ruling. But this is too little and perhaps too late.

Sovereignty cannot be exercised on Temple Mount when the sovereign is halakhically banned from entering the place where he wishes to exercise it. The sovereignty on Temple Mount either exists or it does not.

The High Court of Justice has repeatedly dismissed petitions submitted by Jews regarding the Temple Mount because it knows, among other things, that the Jewish desire to visit the Temple Mount is not widespread. Most observant Jews yearn for the Temple Mount from afar, because of the halakhic restrictions imposed by the rabbis. In contrast, millions of Muslims frequent it. The High Court will not change the status quo for a few thousand Jews wishing to visit Temple Mount.

Rabbis with a broad halakhic-historic view have already realized that religious emotion is a powerful political factor in the struggle over Israel. They know that the de facto renunciation of Temple Mount has weakened us, and that the Palestinians, who control it almost exclusively today, derive from it immense power to cause damage. The rabbis can still fix what they had a part in spoiling. They have found ways in the past to ease severe restrictions in times of emergency, such as the prohibition against eating chametz (leaven) on Pesach or fasting on Yom Kippur. They are capable of finding a way to moderate the ban on visiting Temple Mount. Anyone familiar with the issue knows that this is possible, albeit in a limited way. One has only to dare.