Jerusalem’s
Temple Mount:
A Jewish-Muslim Flashpoint
Yisrael Medad
This paper was originally
published as ACPR's Policy Paper No. 111 (2000).
October 2004
A Considered
Afterthought
This monograph, composed for
publication prior to the outbreak of violence that followed then MK
Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000 that was
nevertheless referred to, sought to provide a historical overview as
well as a political insight into the potential for that sacred site as
a “flashpoint”. I feel confident, after re-reading it, that I
succeeded in my goal.
But I desired to accomplish
more. I pinpointed a specific problem that I discerned, one that was
shared, amazingly perhaps, by all shades of Israel’s coalition
governments, without regard to ideological persuasion or allegiance.
At the paper’s end, I wrote that Israel’s establishment faced a
choice: either to ignore the importance of the Temple Mount to the
fabric of Jewish historical and political self-identification or to
capitulate, in the name of compromise and self-abnegation.
In August 2003, the Minister
for Public Security, Tzachi Hanegbi, after secret consultations by
police officers were made with the Jordanian monarchy, opened the
Temple Mount to tourist visits by Jews. My main complaint that in
prohibiting any overt Jewish connection to the site Israel was acting
illogically, besides that policy being in violation of the letter of
the law as well as distorting that state’s Jewish character, had been
addressed and countered.
What I presume was a great
surprise to those who make up Israel’s establishment, the politicians,
bureaucrats of the various ministries, the police, the judges and the
Rabbis, as well as the media, those responsible for for the trampling
of Jewish rights for more than three decades, no Arab riots broke out
while, on the other hand, over 60,000 Jews have walked through the
Temple Mount esplanade, rediscovering their past and even their future
as a national people.
In one fell swoop, Hanegbi’s
move ended years of outrageous discrimination unattended to by
Israel’s august Supreme Court justices, rectified an issue of human
rights hypocritically ignored by all liberal-progressive-leftist civil
society groups and highlighted the touted lie that the Temple Mount
must be a tinderbox of messianic violence.
In the wake of the new policy,
Jews led by Rabbis and scholars now receive on-site explainations
regarding the intricacies of the religious and ritual aspects of the
Mount, in addition to its history and archeology. Though dogged by
Waqf provocateurs, who seek to draw the attention of the police to
supposed attempts by Jews to pray, the thousands of Jews who have
entered have proven that the consciousness of the Temple Mount’s
primacy has not been thwarted, neither by hostile Muslims nor by
indifferent Israeli officials. One cannot, though, escape the
suspicion that all these years, the police could have allowed visits
if only the state authorities would have acted as if they are the
legal sovereign power they theoretically claim to be.
Nevertheless, the Waqf still
exerts a dominating role as an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish subversive
force. In the first instance, Israel kowtows to the Waqf and allows
the Jordanians and Egyptians to deal with structural problems that
have developed. These include the collapse of a wall in the Temple
Mount compound, near the Islamic Museum in September 2003, while the
southern wall continued to develop an outwards bulge. Although Israeli
archeologists believe the bulge and the wall collapse are due to
unauthorized Waqf underground construction, non-Jewish bodies,
Jordanian and Egyptian, are dealing with the situation.
Then, in February 2004, a wall
along the ascent to the Mughrabim Gate of the Temple Mount, adjacent
to the Western Wall Plaza, crumbled after a snowstorm and an
earthquake. To complicate matters, in April 2004, the Temple Mount’s
eastern wall developed its own bulge and a classified government
report claimed it too is in danger of immediate collapse.
Incidentally, another more
symbolic collapse, was contained in an article by an Egyptian, Ahmed
Mahmad Oufa, who wrote in August 2003, that the Qur`anic verse
mentioning Muhammad’s night journey has nothing to do with Jerusalem,
upset their position. The entire Muslim claim to Jerusalem and al-Aqsa
is based on a mistake Oufa made clear.
So, although Israel has
asserted its sovereignty by permitting once again visits of Jews, as
tourists, the Temple Mount still is outside the state’s full and
practical authority.
|
Jerusalem’s
Temple Mount:
A Jewish-Muslim Flashpoint
|
“Jerusalem
and the Temple Mount are the cornerstones of Jewish identity.” |
|
|
Prime Minister Ehud Barak,
the United Nations,
September 7, 2000
|
|
“Yes, at Camp David,
Israel did agree to a form of Muslim sovereignty over the Temple Mount.” |
|
|
Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel TV Channel 1,
November 16, 2000 |
A Matter of Sensitivity
In a 1929 handbook prepared for British
Mandate officials published just prior to the outbreak of another round of
Arab riots that led to 133 Jewish dead, L.G.A. Cust, himself a former
Palestine District Officer of Jerusalem, wrote of an attempt to secure the
formal transfer of the “Wailing Wall”, part of the Temple Mount retaining
walls, to Jewish ownership four years previously, that “the Military
Governor...discouraged the pursuit of the matter in view of the sensitive
state of Arab opinion”.1
The very same terminology was employed by
the former Deputy to the President of Israel’s Supreme Court, Professor
Menachem Elon, when he wrote, in a decision to prohibit Jews from worshipping
on the Temple Mount, that the site possessed “great
sensitivity...extraordinary sensitivity that has no parallel anywhere”.2
In the name of that sensitivity, his
adjudication prohibited a Jew from entering the holy site adorned with
phylacteries or wearing a prayer shawl.
In September 2000, as if in the wake of a
thunderclap, the Temple Mount assumed center stage in the ongoing Arab-Israel
conflict and the negotiations being conducted to bring about its resolution. A
visit by Likud opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, to the Temple Mount compound,
but not to the Muslim buildings, on Thursday, September 28, served Yasser
Arafat as a pretext. Defining the visit as a “provocation”, a charge echoed by
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and French President Jacques Chirac,
elements of the Palestinian Autonomy (PA) initiated violent behavior that drew
violent responses by Israeli police. Israel’s acting Foreign Minister, Prof.
Shlomo Ben-Ami, later claimed that he had taken advice from Jabril Rajoub, a
leading figure of the PA’s security establishment, who assured him that if
Sharon did not enter any mosque, there would be no trouble. Israel’s General
Security Services (Shabak) confirmed that it did not advise that Sharon’s
visit be cancelled at the time.3
These events have reinforced the position
that the issue of the establishment of clearly defined political rights and
sovereignty in and over the city of Jerusalem is inseparable from the question
of the religious claims of the three major monotheistic faiths. In the
Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, Israel’s former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
committed Israel to respect
the present special role of
the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem [and]
when negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give
high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”
4
This brought to the fore the competing
attentions and sensitivities to the question of Jerusalem’s future status of
Israel, Jordan and the PLO, as well as the Vatican, Saudi Arabia and Morocco,
and even Russia.
There are some observers who support a
theory that Rabin consciously had sought to set the Muslims at each other so
as to forestall a decision being made concerning the final status of
Jerusalem. In an odd development, Prime Minister Netanyahu discovered that he
needed to intervene on Jordan’s behalf to prevent its Religious Affairs
Department employees from being forcibly ejected from their Temple Mount
offices by Arafat’s PZ security forces.5
In the wake of the recent “Al-Aqsa
Intifada”, the essence of what the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty intended to
be the fate of Jerusalem is being questioned. An Egyptian report from Amman
noted:
That “special role” means,
according to the Israeli interpretation of the clause, that the control of
the shrines would be handed over to Jordan rather than the
Palestinians...the late King Hussein, retained Jordan’s status as the
guardian of the Islamic shrines in Arab East Jerusalem when he renounced
Jordan’s legal and administrative relations with the Israeli-occupied
territories in July 1988 [thus] averting a vacuum, which would allow the
Israelis to take control of the Islamic shrines there since the Palestinians
were not yet ready to fill that vacuum... “King Abdullah is standing firm,”
said the source. “He has clearly told Barak and US officials that Jordan
would not want to have any role that would substitute the Palestinian right
to Arab East Jerusalem.”6
Menachem Begin, Prime Minister during
Camp David I in September 1978, steadfastly refused even to permit Jerusalem
to be raised as an integral discussion issue. Ehud Barak, at Camp David II in
July 2000, broke tradition. It would be no understatement to say that no other
city throughout the ages has known such struggle and strife, both physically
and spiritually, over so small an area of territory. What are the roots, facts
and myths that feed this conflict whose flashpoint is the Temple Mount?
Jerusalem – The Eternal Jewish Capital
As related in the Bible and substantially
supported by archeological discoveries, King David established Jerusalem as
his capital, seven years following his royal anointment in Hebron, through the
purchase of Aravna’s threshing-floor that was located at the great rock now
under the golden-domed structure called in Hebrew Even Hashtiyah (Rock
of Foundation) and in Arabic El Tzachra (the Rock).7
This site was, already sanctified from
the time of Abraham as “Shalem” the “Land of Moriah” and the “Mount of the
Lord”.8
Solomon built the First Temple; Ezra
began to erect the Second Temple that later was magnificently renovated by
Herod. The Temple Mount is considered the place where the Shechina –
the Divine Presence – rested and, as such, is sanctified for eternity.
Jerusalem, in Jewish tradition, is the
axis mundi, the precise point at where the heavenly and the terrestrial
cojoin. According to an early Rabbinic interpretation, the pre-echo to
contemporary nationalist propaganda, there are three locations that certainly
are beyond any non-Jewish claim that would override the Jewish claim – the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Machpela Cave in Hebron and Joseph’s Tomb in
Shchem (Nablus) – for they were purchased in a contractual agreement manner
beyond the right of conquest.9
Jews the world over face towards
Jerusalem when praying. Extrapolating from Psalms 122:3, Jewish tradition
holds that Jerusalem unites all Jews.10
The belief that the period of redemption
at the end of days will be marked by the building on the Mount of the Third
Temple is contained in numerous prayers, customs and rabbinic homilies. At
every Jewish wedding, Jerusalem is recalled. Tens of thousands gather at the
Western Wall Plaza on the Ninth of Av, a 25-hour fast day that commemorates
catastrophic events connected with Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The
evidence is that Jews indeed entered the area of the holy precincts (the
current area of the Haram is not contiguous with the sanctified Temple area)
for several centuries after the Roman destruction of the city in 70 CE.11
Despite this, following the conquest of
Jerusalem in 1967, the Chief Rabbinate issued an all-inclusive ban on entrance
into any portion of the Haram. Moshe Dayan ordered the removal of an Israeli
flag from the Dome of the Rock and later, on June 17th, authorized the Waqf
religious officials to reassert their administration of the site.12
Since that time, many appeals have been
made to Israel’s High Court of Justice to permit Jews to pray within the
confines of the Haram compound. The 1967 Law for the Protection of the Holy
Places allows for free access and freedom of worship but the anomaly is that,
of all the inter- and intra-religious conflicts, it is the Jews that are
prevented from fulfilling a religious duty. They are banned from praying on
the Temple Mount in order to ensure public order.13
A small Israeli pennant flag on the desk
of the police officer in charge of the police station on the Mount caused a
major commotion a decade ago and had to be removed. No overtly Jewish symbol
or ceremony can be displayed or conducted within the Temple Mount compound.
This has resulted in an implicit recognition of Muslim hegemony.
The position of those who support a
Jewish presence on the Temple Mount is based on the fact that the current area
known as the Temple Mount is considerably larger, especially on the
north-south axis, than the original 500 square cubit compound of which only a
smaller section thereof was too sacred to be entered by those ritually
unclean. They were supported by Chief Rabbis Shlomo Goren and Mordechai
Eliyahu, Chief Rabbis Chayim David Halevy, Tel Aviv, She’ar Yashuv Cohen,
Haifa and David Chelouche, Netanya, and other rabbinic authorities. The
majority of Rabbis, though, continued to observe the prohibition on total
entrance anywhere within, which was first publicized in the summer of 1967.
Jerusalem as a Muslim Holy City
Abdullah, King Hussein’s grandfather,
following his conquest of the Old City in 1948 established in 1951, a new
post, that of Guardian of the Haram E-Sharif and Supreme Custodian of the Holy
Places of All Other Religions.14
During the Mandate period, it was the
Supreme Muslim Council which administered the site, a tradition stemming from
the original establishment of the Temple Mount Waqf in 1432. This body’s head
was the Mufti, Haj Amin El-Husseini (Feisal El-Husseini’s distant relative),
who viewed Jewish devotion at the Western Wall as a disguise of “their desired
aspiration to gain control over the Haram E-Sharif, which is well-known to
all”.15
All throughout the 1920s, tension over
rights to the Western Wall alley (it was only in the aftermath of the 1967 war
that the Wall area was enlarged) was constant. The Arabs protested over the
bringing of holy arks, chairs and lanterns, while the Jews protested over
dervish ceremonies, the purposeful walking through of donkeys, throwing of
stones at worshippers and the reconstruction within the Haram which damaged
the Wall itself. The Muslims based themselves on decisions of 1840 and 1911
that allowed the Jews the historical-moral privilege but not the legal right
to pray at the Wall. Jewish religious and civil authorities brought historical
records dating back centuries to prove otherwise.
The August 1929 riots, during which 133
Jews died and 350 were injured, culminated a period of controversy which began
11 months earlier when, on the sacred Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur),
the Mufti succeeded in persuading the British to remove a curtain which
separated male and female worshippers at the Wall. Over the following months,
demonstrations and rallies, as well as extensive printed propaganda, were
regular features of Mandate intercommunal rivalries. Indeed, Izzat Darwaza, a
director of Waqf dedications during that period, wrote that the riots were a
direct result of incitement fomented by the Mufti who exploited the explosive
religious agitation for political purposes. In testimony before the Shaw
Commission of Inquiry, an Arab journalist stated “when a Muslim hears of the
desire of the Jews to return to Palestine... he certainly believes that the
Jews are casting an eye upon the holy places of Jerusalem.”16
The rioters were encouraged by religious
leaders to kill Jews while in the Haram courtyard at midday, Friday, August
23, 1929.17
During the later period of disturbances
between 1936-39, the Mufti, again the fomenter of violence against Jews, found
sanctuary within the Haram walls between July 17 and October 13, 1937,
correctly assuming that the British would not dare to enter the compound. In
April 1947, a recent Jewish immigrant named Itzkowitz, who mistakenly entered
the compound, was stoned to death.
Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim forces
in 638 CE. The link to Jerusalem is based on a flight taken by the prophet
Muhammad on his winged horse, El-Burak, in 620 CE to “the furthest (Al-Aqsa)
Mosque”, this despite the fact that Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Qur`an.
Commentators insist that the “Al-Aqsa” Mosque was located in the Hejaz
Peninsula, either in Medina or another town, al-Gi’ranah. The ascent to Heaven
via Jerusalem is found in the Qur`an in Sura 17, verse 1. Jerusalem is termed
Ulla al-Qiblatayn, the first of the two directions of prayer, due to the fact
that prior to the setting of the direction towards Mecca, Muhammad had had his
faithful face Jerusalem for a few months, probably due to Jewish influence.
Today, Muslims can be seen prostrating themselves towards Mecca although their
posteriors face the Dome of the Rock. The assigning to Jerusalem a
post-Qur`anic sacredness fell to Caliphs in later centuries who sought
political advantage over their rivals.18
Ever since the 1967 war, local Muslims
and their supporters and sympathizers worldwide, including UNESCO, have been
extremely suspicious of any Israeli move vis-à-vis Jerusalem. Whether
the matter was archeological excavations, the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by
a deranged Christian Australian in 1969, a Magistrate’s Court decision of 1976
in favor of Jewish prayer on the Mount, the murderous shooting outburst of a
Jewish psychopath in 1984 or the lethal treatment dealt to Arab rioters in
1990, not to mention the unfulfilled plans by several extremist Jewish groups
(the Lifta Gang, the Jewish Terrorist Organization) to detonate explosives so
as to destroy the Dome of the Rock, the preferred interpretation by Arab
Muslim leaders, both political and religious (for example, Feisal El-Husseini
has been appointed to the Waqf council), has been sinister Jewish pretensions
to remove Muslim control of their holy sites and cause damage to them. These
are assumed to be directed by official government and municipal institutions
despite disclaimers. There exists little, if any trust as regards Israeli
intentions towards the Temple Mount.
It was a staple of Arab propaganda to
claim that the Biblical non-Jewish population of the Land of Israel was Arab.
One proposition is that: “The Hebrews sprung from the tribes of Arab nomads.”19
Upon the return of the PLO to the
autonomy regions, PA organs have been retrieving this claim of pre-Israelite
roots in Jerusalem, as well as other areas. Arafat was quoted telling Gazan
youngsters attending a summer camp organized by the League of Young Christians
that, “Jerusalem, it is Bir Salem. Salem was one of the Canaanite kings, one
of our forefathers.”20
MK Abdul Malik Dahamshe of the Democratic
Arab Party, a representative of the radical Islamic Movement and one of the
attorneys who argued the legal case for the Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin stated
in an interview on March 24, 1997 with IMRA’s Aaron Lerner that:
the Western Wall is holy to the Muslims is
not new. We think, and also knowledgeable Israeli sources think, that the
Western Wall is not associated with the remains of the Jewish Temple. When the
Temple was destroyed not a single stone remained in place. The Western Wall is
part of the Al Aqsa Mosque complex. When Muhammad took his horse to Jerusalem
– and it was a special horse – he tied it to the Western Wall before he
ascended into heaven. Also, Jewish sources say that there is nothing
connecting the Jews to the Western Wall.
A singular yet brave voice opposing this
anti-Jewish and anti-Israel ideology has been Professor Sheikh Abdul Hadi
Palazzi, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Muslim Community.
In lectures and correspondence he has promoted the idea that “I have reflected
on the state of Jewish-Muslim relationships and feel the urgent need for the
development of a new attitude toward our Jewish brethren and for a critical
reading of Arab policy toward Israel”. Furthermore, “the idea of ‘two
Jerusalems’, if realized, would not be a solution to the problem but a source
of new troubles and conflicts.”21
Status Quo and Modus Vivendi
The British Mandate for Palestine was
obligated to establish a special commission to study, define and determine the
rights and claims in connection with the Holy Places.22
This was never done. What has dominated
the relationship between the temporal and pietistic has been the principle of
status quo which was established by a firman issued in 1852 by Sultan Abdul
Majid (which rejected the Latin Patriarch claim to overturn the 1757 firman
awarded to the Greek Orthodox Church), in 1855 in the Treaty of Paris and in
1878 in the Treaty of Berlin. There the Holy Places were to benefit from
inviolability.
In essence, however, the Vatican has
always considered the status quo arrangement to be detrimental to its own
desire for reassertation of its praedominium. As Meron Benvenisti has pointed
out
The question of the Holy
Places in Jerusalem is undoubtedly the problem with the widest
ramifications, since, for the first time since the founding of Christianity
and Islam, the Jews found themselves [in 1967] responsible for the holy
sites.23
It is in this light that the
internationalization or corpus separatum scheme was embraced, originally in
the framework of the U.N. General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 of
November 29, 1947. The results of Israel’s War of Independence and the
decision of David Ben-Gurion in 1949, adopted as law by the Knesset, to
declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel effectively forestalled any advance on
an internationalization scheme. The subsequent Basic Law: Jerusalem the
Capital of Israel, passed upon the initiative of MK Geula Cohen in 1981, was a
formal seal on the situation.
The agreements signed by Israel in 1993
and 1997 with the Vatican, though intended to normalize relations with the
Papal State, did not fully eradicate any eventual Christian-Muslim cooperation
facilitating international pressure on Israel to yield on the issue of
Jerusalem. As regards the question of the holy places, Israeli diplomats are
well aware that the Vatican still retains a strong desire to de-territorialize
Jerusalem, allowing the city to mutate into a spiritual idea once again.
The Vatican-PLO Agreement, as well as
Pope John Paul’s pronouncement of Jerusalem’s “special status” on July 24,
2000, underscores this behind-the-curtain reality.
The successive Israel governments since
1967, both Labor and Likud, have sought to downplay and ignore the Jewish
claim to a presence on the Temple Mount, convinced that to act otherwise would
ignite a religious contest more damaging than that which evolved into the
Crimea War which was fought over the right of which Christian sect would keep
guard over the keys of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
The Muslim-Jewish Clash
According to Muslim ritual practice, at
least as propounded by most major contemporary Arab spokesmen, the entire
Haram compound of the Temple Mount is an all-inclusive holy shrine. No
non-Muslim may conduct any other religious service or ceremony therein. The
president of the High Islamic Committee in Jerusalem, the late Hasan Fetin
Tahbob, released a statement in March 1994 that affirmed Jerusalem’s position
as being an Arabic and Islamic city, the holy city which is the first
direction of Muslim prayer and the third Muslim sacred place where the Prophet
ascended to heaven. A month earlier, the East Jerusalem journal Kol El-Arab,
gave notice that no joint supervision of the Temple Mount and other shared
Jewish-Muslim holy shrines would be tolerated, nor would non-Muslim worship be
allowed.24
This exclusivist approach is in
contradistinction to the Jewish tradition, based on Isaiah 56:7, that non-Jews
are not fully rejected from the Temple Mount as “their burnt-offerings and
sacrifices shall be accepted upon My altar, for My house shall be called a
house of prayer for all people”. Heider Abed A-Shafi, formerly of the PLO
negotiating team, was firm, even before the Oslo Agreement became public, that
“peace will not be established in the region without recognizing the sovereign
rights of the Palestinians in Jerusalem...for Jerusalem is part of our
national and religious identity.”25
Yasser Arafat himself was planning to
declare East Jerusalem the capital of the future state of Palestine during an
aborted visit there.26
As researcher Raphael Israeli has noted,
fundamentalist Islamism has sought to seize the “public square” in their
attempts to delegitimize and usurp existing Muslim states. This “public
square” becomes even more central and imperative when radical groups in
Israel, backed by and backing Arafat’s regime, view the Temple Mount as a
supra-Islamic location which is to be reconquered from such a heretical
entity.27
The exploitation of the Temple Mount to
advance the Palestinian nationalist cause, first begun by the Grand Mufti in
mobilizing India’s Muslim population in the early 1930s, has reached
astonishing levels of sophistication. Just a fortnight prior to the outbreak
of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Sheikh Kamal Chatib, vice-chairman of the Islamic
Movement – Northern Section, addressed a rally at Um El-Fahm attended by
several tens of thousands. Chatib warned the Israeli authorities: “We will not
shed tears if Al-Aqsa is harmed, for we shall shed blood.”28
In the wake of the so-called “Al-Aqsa
Intifada”, columnist Meir Shtiglitz had this to say:
At Camp David, the
Palestinians rejected forcefully the American hints concerning an
internationalization of Jerusalem...and upon the outbreak of the riots, the
post-modernist MK Azmi Bashara decried, together with the post-communist MK
Baraka, the Islamic sacrilege caused by Sharon’s boots. This is enough to
understand that a surrendering of the Temple Mount will end us up with
[Hizbullah] Sheikh Nasarallah sermonizing at Al-Aqsa via satellite to
youngsters in Palestinian Um El-Fahm, crowds in the sacred Qom and the
Taliban in Afghanistan. This will be a path laid with zealotry, hate,
hypocrisy and piety all the way to a Middle Eastern hell.29
Since Oslo: Muslim Assertiveness and Jewish Abjurement
It had seemed that the October 1990
incident, when 19 Arabs were killed on the Temple Mount following the stoning
of Jewish worshippers congregated at the Western Wall Plaza below, had been
unique in its ferocity. However, religious-based violence, leading to
unforeseen fatalities, broke out again in September 1996. The initiatory
process was similar to that of the 1929 riots, in that a lie was exploited to
ignite murderous instincts. In 1929, the Jews were accused of seeking the
destruction of Al-Aqsa.30
In 1996, the story was spread, and not
for the first nor last time, that an underground tunnel endangered the
foundations of the Temple Mount mosques. As for the Jewish side, despite
repeated desecrations of the historical and archeological remnants of the
Jewish periods of the Temple Mount, no mass Jewish violence comparable to that
of Muslim behavior has been initiated in connection with the Temple Mount,
notwithstanding the singular “Jewish Underground” incidents of almost 20 years
ago. Another matter, outside the scope of this monograph, is the suspicion
that Israel’s security services have manipulated and magnified possible
threats from Jewish sources, such as strange incident of a supposed pig’s head
toss into the Temple Mount Plaza in December 1997. Instances such as these,
attempts at self-aggrandizement or political harassment, have only backfired
by causing Muslims to increase their own illegal activity.
In the years since the signing of the
Oslo Accords, the Waqf, together with significant elements of Israel’s Islamic
Movement based in the Galilee, have been extremely active in altering the
Temple Mount’s Islamic physical character. They have based a major element of
their anti-Israel ideological agenda under the slogan “Al-Aqsa is in Danger”.
In a typical speech of Arafat, such as in Morocco on July 29, 1998, he stated
that “the Zionists are determined to destroy the Mosques,” as reported in the
PA’s semi-official organ, Al-Chayat Al-Jadidah, the following day. In a
Makor Rishon interview, published on May 22, 1998, the PA’s Jerusalem
Mufti Akrem Tzabari announced that “Jews have no right to the Temple Mount.”
The Waqf administrators have flexed their
muscles on other opportunities. For example, Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert was
asked to leave the Temple Mount compound on May 13, 1998 while hosting an
international conference; police were refused permission to enter on December
4, 1998; and a group of Knesset members was prevented from entering on August
13, 2000.
As it happened, the violence of September
1996 was a double cross perpetrated by the Waqf and similar to the maneuver
practiced by the Palestinians on Minister Ben-Ami four years later. Permission
was originally given months earlier for the opening of the Hasmonean Tunnel,
and was intended by then acting Prime Minister Shimon Peres to be a quid pro
quo: the Muslims would be permitted to proceed with their program of
fashioning out, in the area of Solomon’s Stables an underground mosque, the
Al-Marawani. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who later authorized the
tunnel opening, was under that impression of the trade-off. Indeed, it was
found that they were granted permission to begin the construction work as
early as March 1995. 31
During this same period, despite the
official policy of Israel’s government and the Chief Rabbinate to downplay the
role of the Temple Mount, awareness increased among Jews concerning the site’s
centrality not only as a religious factor but as a pivotal element in the
unfolding political struggle. This awareness stemmed from several sources.
These included, in part, the work of the Rabbi Yisrael Ariel’s Temple
Institute in publishing of a popular series of prayer books; Temple Feast
assemblies attracting upwards of 1,000 participants; Yeshivot dedicated
to Temple studies such as Ulpana D’vir and Bet Bechirah; Pascal Sacrificial
training ceremonies; and the media interest surrounding the birth of a Red
Heifer in March 1997, which was seen as a possible solution to problems of
religious impurity which present an obstacle to unimpeded entrance to the
Temple Mount. Eventually, a coordinating body, Shocharey HaMikdash, was
formed under the chairmanship of Bar-Ilan University lecturer Hillel Weiss in
an attempt to unite all the various grassroots activist societies.
In another arena, a greater number of
High Court petitions were brought before the High Court for Justice as well as
lobbying efforts among ministers of Netanyahu’s government. Later, in 1999,
Chaim Ramon, Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, was also approached and
subsequently, his aide, Daniel Levy, conducted talks with Temple Mount
activists.
The Forces Set in Motion
A pro-Palestinian scholar, Karen
Armstrong, lecturer at Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism, has made a
relevant, if skewered, analysis of the framework in what she terms “radical
religiosity”.32
Jewish holy places, she states, acquired
a new centrality even among the traditionally secular Labor Zionist movement.
The intensity of the feelings toward such sacred places (and we only need to
recall Barak’s phrase in the Fall of 2000 referring to “the nation’s most
sacred treasures”), depends on perceptions of threat and/or loss. Although she
exhibits bias in putting forth a pluralist Muslim vision versus a Jewish
exclusivity as regards Jerusalem, she directs us to discuss the link between
sacred relics and identity.
It is exactly that lack of identity,
consciously promoted by government policies and Supreme Court adjudications,
that is now, to an extent, backfiring on the negotiators at Camp David II and
beyond.
Abba Eban was quoted in a 1995 interview
as saying
It’s not so terrible that a
Muslim or Palestinian flag will fly over the mosques, in this square
kilometer, a la the Vatican...in my opinion, the state of Israel must repose
the Holy Places in the hands of a Muslim authority of the Palestinian
authority but not divide the city”.
33
Having for so long denied the Temple
Mount any Jewish connection, Israeli politicians, on both sides of the
spectrum, face criticism for allowing a “narrative myth”, as the post-Zionists
term it, to dominate the possible resolution of the conflict. The entire
thrust of the Israel political establishment, to minimalize the Temple Mount
as an element of the Arab-Israel conflict, was proving a difficult task. The
Israeli Islamic movement, in tandem with objectives of Arafat’s autonomy,
became effective at turning the site into a major battlefield. They defined
the lines of confrontation – its history, its spiritual value and its
archeological importance – and the Israeli authorities failed to meet the
challenge.
The Oslo Process as well as the Muslim
activities began to affect those small groups of Jewish activists who, despite
their sideline status, viewed themselves as keeping alive the flame of the
Temple Mount. On the opposing side, Muslim leaders increased their total
denial of any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount.
In early 1995, the Chai VeKayam
[Living and Existing] group, led by Yehuda Etzion, began a campaign to hold
prayer gatherings within the Temple Mount courtyard, at times forcing
themselves in. Repeated arrests notwithstanding, the attempts continued. The
police, thwarted by Etzion’s persistence, had at one point prohibited him from
leaving Ofra, his home community. Later, he was served with orders from the
Military Governor of Judea & Samaria banning him from entering Jerusalem. Even
though the Sephardi Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron opposed vigorously the Chai
VeKayam activities, and published an article in the National Religious
Party’s organ mocking the idea of a synagogue within the confines of the
Temple Mount. In a later interview, he repeated his opposition saying:
From a political point of
view, I think it would be a most serious mistake on our part to allow all to
enter...if a Jew is permitted only to enter into a small narrow; and not all
the public could enter that small synagogue, we will lose all sovereignty
over 90% of the sacred area.
Nevertheless, he admitted that
When I met the Prime
Minister Ehud Barak [prior to Camp David II], I said to him that the Temple
Mount is our most holy and dearest site and we must keep the sovereignty
over it even more than any other place in Israel...we must keep total
control over the Temple Mount.34
The Temple Mount activists received
support from the “Yesha Rabbis” group which published a public letter, signed
by seven leading rabbinic figures in the Gush Emunim settlement movement,
addressed to the Chief Rabbis. The letter appeared in Gilyon Rabbanei Yesha,
No. 23, Tevet 5755 (December 1994) and requested that they deliberate the need
to ascend the Mount and to erect a synagogue there. The Yesha Rabbis
themselves encouraged all to ascend the mount and enter the non-sacred
portions of the compound lying outside the former Temple courtyard.35
Despite the disagreements over ritual,
the raising of the Temple Mount issue at Camp David II caused pressure on the
Chief Rabbinate which appointed, in September 2000, a committee of rabbis to
examine the issue of building a synagogue on the Temple Mount. The committee
will be hearing historical testimony regarding the presence of synagogues in
previous generations in the confines of the Temple Mount. One suggestion
raised is to construct a synagogue on the outskirts of the Temple Mount, over
the Golden Gate, in such a way that access would not be through the wall but
over it. This would make it easier for Jews who refrain from entering the
compound. It could stir less opposition, from Muslims, for a Jewish presence
on Temple Mount. Other Rabbis support a formal Jewish presence near the
Mograbi Gate which is the only place at the site in full Israeli control.
Against all intents, the Temple Mount
assumed a central place on the political agenda. It had been the intention of
Moshe Dayan, who feared the potential of the Temple Mount in 1967, to erase
the “Jewish-value quotient” of the site, aided as he was, by weak-willed
politicians, rabbis and Supreme Court justices. Nevertheless, in seeking to
end the conflict, the promoters of Oslo set in motion a clash that would break
out in the fall of 2000. In an odd twist of fate, it is Ehud Barak who has
succeeded in overriding all that Dayan sought to achieve. Although there were
those, including Barak, who ridiculed Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in
September 1996 that the Temple Mount area was the “foundation stone of Jewish
national existence”, force of circumstances have led them to utter similar
statements no less jingoistic.
In October 1997, Elyakim Rubinstein,
Israel’s State Attorney, warned Prime Minister Netanyahu that he should be
discussing at the highest security forum levels what Rubinstein called “the
serious developments of Waqf construction”.36
With the situation growing progressively
worse, Rubinstein again sought to move government institutions and
unhesitatingly defined the continued Waqf activities on the Temple Mount as
“kicking our history around”. But displaying incomprehensible bureaucratic
lethargy, he adopted a defeatist stand, saying that it would be “problematic”
to supervise the Waqf.37
In fact, he has consistently instructed
police not to halt these unlawful Waqf activities. In an affidavit presented
to the High Court at the end of December 1999 in response to a petition to
halt Waqf activities, Rubinstein argued that the halt “is almost certain to
cause bloodshedding and the inflammation of passions that could easily spread
from the Temple Mount and Jerusalem to the territories and to all Israel”.38
On the local level, even a 1997
suggestion to have the Jerusalem municipality fix a sign near the entrance of
the Temple Mount that would inform tourists of the Jewish history of the site,
information they never otherwise would receive, has not been acted upon.39
An attempt in the fall of 2000 by the
author to prod the Attorney-General to charge the Prime Minister with criminal
infraction of this law in allowing the Waqf to destroy Jewish artifacts was
rejected with the explanation that A-G Rubinstein desired that the situation
be dealt within the public-political arena.
Likud politician Arik Sharon had this to
say about his fellow Likud coalition government ministers: “in all that
relates to Jerusalem, the government is acting like a bunch of idiotic
children.”40
There is no reason to presume that any of
the other ministers in other governments at other times acted any better.
The courts, too, continued to lend
support to the distancing of Jews from the Temple Mount. Supreme Court Justice
Dov Levin expressed his deep-seated doubts as to the wisdom of the traditional
stand assumed by Israel’s High Court of Justice in a decision published on
August 4, 1995 that
to prevent only Jews on the
holiest day for Jews to ascend the Temple Mount has a bad ring and is not
proper. The negating of entrance for a defined specific group in a
democratic country...cannot be acceptable...if [the police] announce
beforehand that a danger stemming from the Waqf will prevent ascent by Jews,
you are signaling to raise tensions and cause a disturbance in order to
prevent Jews from entering.
But three years later, the Jerusalem
District Court, dealing with another of Etzion’s forays into the Temple Mount,
decided that “prayer is a provocation”.
“Women of the Kotel”, a group of
non-Orthodox women demanding the right to pray at the Western Wall, in perfect
parallel to the claims of Jews wishing to pray on the Temple Mount, have
successfully petitioned the High Court despite the violence from Haredi Jews
they provoke. Although A-G Rubinstein wrote to the Court that their activity
could cause “an explosion”, the justices criticized the laxity displayed by
the Government in assigning the women a prayer spot and announced that they
would personally visit the Plaza area. One judge, Tova Strasberg-Cohen,
berated the state prosecutor’s representative, terming the non-action a
“defect”. Gender, it appears, is a more politically correct factor for the
justices.41
Another phenomenon has been Christian
involvement. A recent book by Gershom Gorenberg, End of Days (Free
Press), highlights this tandem development. Gorenberg portrays the links
between some of the more extreme proponents of Jewish rights to the Temple
Mount and fundamentalist Christian associations in more ominous terms. The
book examines why the Temple Mount is a powerful catalyst for these groups and
why they help Orthodox Jews prepare for the rebuilding of the Temple.
Gorenberg was quoted in a CNN website
review on November 16, 2000 as saying that the rebirth of Israel and the
conquest of the Old City was represented as “prophecy...coming true. It was a
terrible theological tease”. There have been attempts by members of the
International Christian Embassy to pray on the Temple Mount and they have been
forcibly removed or arrested.42
The rumor that water was observed to be
flowing from out of the Sacred Rock at the center of the upraised platform in
May 1999, seemingly fulfilling prophecies in the book of Ezekiel and
Zechariah, led to heightened Christian interest.
At one point, the Prime Minister’s
special anti-terror command was reported to view Christian violence on the
Temple Mount as a distinct possibility but developments seem to indicate that
this is more a media-hype item.43
Post Camp David II
On September 10, 2000, Ehud Barak was
interviewed by Sam Donaldson on the NBC television network and asked his
response to Yasser Arafat’s declaration never to accept a compromise over the
Temple Mount. Donaldson called it a “sticking point” and quoted Arafat as
saying, “I can’t betray my people...I will never agree to give up
sovereignty.” Barak, according to the transcript, replied:
I don’t think it would be
clever to discuss these delicate negotiations on the most delicate item on
the agenda in front of the cameras. What they intimate is that the result
will be that no Israeli Prime Minister will be ever be able to put his
signature to an agreement that would transfer or confer the sovereignty over
the cornerstone of our identity to Palestinian sovereignty.
The reason for the Temple Mount assuming
such a central place in the peace negotiations can be traced to the earthworks
initiated by the PA Waqf, together with the Israel Islamic Movement, to expand
the success that had been achieved in constructing the underground Al-Marawani
mosque in 1996. What was intended to be an alternative prayer hall for Ramadan
month prayer assemblies during the rainy season was only the beginning of a
major excavation work. The status quo envisioned by all Israel’s governments
was accepted by the Israeli public as long as it was the Jewish side that was
perceived to be the extremists, on the one hand, and that there was no
physical alteration of the compound that could be visualized on the other. The
Muslim side, in a calculated move, began to violate the terms of the status
quo.
Again, in March 1998, Waqf workers began
preparing the underground halls for new construction. Petitions to the High
Court by Jewish groups were rejected, the judges preferring to place the onus
for the halt of the works on the political echelon. In one instance, in May
1998, the police successfully prevented building materials from being lowered
beneath ground but afterwards, the Netanyahu government turned a blind eye.
Neither did the Antiques Authority properly fulfill their legal obligations to
supervise the work there.44
At the beginning of August 1999, the Waqf
attempted to breach the southern Temple Mount wall from inside, but Prime
Minister Barak swiftly reacted and had it resealed. Nevertheless, the new
mosque hall was inaugurated on August 21, 1999.
In early December, it was discovered that
the Waqf was engaged in further earthworks. Truckloads of archeologically rich
material, estimated at 6,000 tons, was dumped in the Kidron valley.45
A gash 200 feet long and 75 feet wide was
cut into the courtyard floor. The material was found to include artifacts from
the First and Second Temple period as well as the Middle Bronze Age and late
Roman, Byzantine and early Muslim periods. This was too much even for the
center and left of the Israel political spectrum. In the first week in June
2000, an ad appeared in the liberal Ha’Aretz daily signed by over 80
personalities including former mayor Teddy Kollek, Amos Oz, MKs of the Meretz
party and academics and intellectuals protesting the destruction of Jewish
artifacts on the Temple Mount. It was on this background that Barak found
himself, at Camp David II, refusing to grant Arafat total and complete
sovereignty over the holy site despite the fact that his Justice Minister,
Yossi Beilin, an architect of the Oslo Accords, announced in reaction to a
visit by nationalist MKs on the Mount the previous day, that he “had no
objections to seeing a Palestinian flag atop the Temple Mount if the result
would be true peace”.46
On July 23, the United States submitted a
proposal – based on an Israeli proposal – to grant the Palestinians full
sovereignty in the Muslim and Christian quarters, including Christian holy
sites. The Jewish and Armenian quarters would be left under Israeli
sovereignty. In response Arafat told US President Clinton,
I will not agree to any
Israeli sovereign presence in Jerusalem...They can occupy us by force,
because we are weaker now, but in two years, ten years, or one hundred
years, there will be someone who will liberate Jerusalem...the Arab leader
who would give up Jerusalem has not yet been born.
Arafat also referred to an “assertion by
the British mandatory government in 1929 that the Western Wall is the Wall of
Al-Buraq, and that it is regarded as an Islamic Waqf and an historic Islamic
right.”47
Upon the end of the Camp David II
conference, Arafat sought to enlist Arab support for his position on
Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Committee of Arab states, meeting in Agadir, Morocco
on August 28, declared that nothing less than full Palestinian sovereignty
over Jerusalem would be acceptable. A delegation led by Greek Orthodox
Archamandrite Atallah Hanna participated at the session, lending its voice to
the view that Jerusalem is an Arab Islamic and Christian city.48
The information agencies of the
Palestinian Authority, and Arafat himself, began to refer to him as a
modern-day Salah A-Din, liberator of Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
As Danny Rubinstein, veteran commentator
on Palestinian affairs noted, Arafat sees himself and the conflict with Israel
in the Crusader frame of reference. The ancient podium damaged in the blaze
set by Dennis Rohan in 1969, and restored by Egyptian artisans, has not been
installed for it is Arafat who desires to place it in its permanent place as
part of his return to Jerusalem.49
Saeb Erekat revealed to journalist Mary
Curtius that Arafat told US President Clinton at Camp David II “to tell me
that I have to admit that there is a temple below the mosque? I will never do
that”.50
In the two and half months between the
end of the Camp David II talks and the outbreak of Palestinian violence,
several alternative solutions to the Temple Mount issue were proffered.
Internationalization, functional autonomy, and divine sovereignty were among
several conceptualizations. Shimon Peres, when asked to react, took a dim
view. In an interview on Kol Yisrael radio, he said, “things lacking in any
foundation are thrown out into the air...how can Jerusalem be made
international? Who would run it? Outer Mongolia? It’s just gibberish.” Asked
about divine sovereignty, he responded, “I’m not sure God would want to be
some sort of ‘mini-mayor’ over the holy sites.”51
Israel’s political leadership was seen to
be undivided and reacting in a zigzag fashion, first denying and then
admitting to agreeing to various proposals. Minister Beilin indicated that
Israel was willing to grant temporary extraterritorial status to the mosque
compound, this while waiting for a final accord on the issue of sovereignty in
east Jerusalem.52
Acting Foreign Minister Ben-Ami, who two
days before proposed on Kol Yisrael Radio that as a “symbolic expression” the
Palestinians would be awarded “functional autonomy”, declared that Israel
wants sovereignty over the area beneath the mosque area while agreeing to
international guarantees not to dig in the underground section where the
remnants of the Temple are thought to be.53
Prime Minster Barak was at first firm on
the issue. In an interview with Karin Laub, he said that under Israeli rule,
no harm would ever come to the mosques. In July, he had “offered the
Palestinians religious sovereignty on Haram as-Sharif, but insisted on overall
Israeli control.” He later told Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorbjorn Jagland
“that neither he nor any other Israeli prime minister would ever relinquish
sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the ‘heart of the Jewish experience
throughout the ages’.” And as for the charges that Israel wants sovereignty
over the Temple Mount in order to excavate beneath the mosques and unearth the
ruins of the Jewish Temples, he stated “we are barred, for religious reasons,
from conducting excavations on the Temple Mount.” His office later issued a
statement that “Israel wants an arrangement that would ban all archaeological
excavations there”.54
Arafat continued to demand nothing less
than “Islamic sovereignty” and in a CNN report answered Christine Amanpour’s
question whether he would accept shared sovereignty by saying
Rights are rights. I can’t
betray my people. I can’t betray the Arabs...the Christians...the Muslims. I
said we can give the full freedom for the Israelis to go and pray at the
Wailing Wall because we are respecting also Judaism.55
The PA Culture and Arts Minister, Yasser
Abed Rabbo, in an interview with Amira Hass, warned that “Israel is liable to
drag the entire region toward prolonged religious war should it persist with
the demand for sovereignty on the Temple Mount...Israel is playing with fire,”
while promising that a Palestinian state “would uphold the principle of
religious freedom and not interfere with procedures at sites considered holy
by Christians and Jews”.56
On Friday, September 29, 2000, crowds of
Arabs rioted on the Temple Mount, stoning police. In attempting to halt a
breakthrough by the crowd via the Mograbi Gate to the Western Wall area, four
Arabs were killed. Likud leader Ariel Sharon had visited the compound the
previous day.
Barak appeared on ABC television on
October 15 to counter charges that he had been a party to the Sharon visit.
The transcript reads:
Question: Prime Minister, of course
they say you started it. Saeb Erekat says he and Arafat were in your home
two nights before Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount and that they
pleaded with you not to allow that visit. You went ahead. Why did you go
ahead and allow Sharon to go?
PM BARAK: They were at my private
residence, we hosted them. The rest of it is not true. They didn’t mention
it, and they didn’t ask for anything.
Question: They didn’t ask you not
to let General Sharon go?
PM BARAK: No, they didn’t. And
beyond that, our Minister of Public Security, who is also the Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Professor Shlomo Ben-Ami, he talked with the high-ranking
Palestinian official dealing with security in Jerusalem, the Palestinian
aspect of security. He told him Sharon is going to visit. It’s part of
the legal right. It’s part of freedom of access to holy cites by everyone.
But he asked him, “What are your needs?” And the Palestinians told him, “We
have only one demand, that he will not enter the mosques.” Sharon accepted
it under protest, but once he accepted it, there is no way, we are open
society, it is in the middle of our capital, and we cannot forbid it.
Summary
At the Press Center, set up by the Israel
government at the Isrotel Hotel in Jerusalem during October 2000, various
background literature publications were being distributed. One of the booklets
dealt with the relationship of Israel and the Jews with Jerusalem on the
religious plane. This is what the representatives of the world’s media could
have read:
Muslim political interests
in Jerusalem never have the unpleasant overtones of hypocrisy which
Christian claims on the Holy City so frequently have...for the Jewish
people, as we have seen, Jerusalem is not a city containing holy places or
commemorating holy events. The city as such is holy...Can we, should we, in
the second half of this 20th century, make use of religious and/or
secularized symbols that easily become catch-words drawing a dubious
vitality from their mythological roots?57
However well-intentioned Professor
Werblowsky’s thoughts were at the time, he erred. That Israel’s Foreign
Ministry considered his thoughts relevant in 2000 is an unfortunate indication
of the meaning Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have for the country’s
diplomatic corps.
Throughout the past three decades of
Israel’s administration of the territories taken in the Six Days War, the one
constant in the fluctuations of politics has been the Israel position that
Jerusalem has been united, is indivisible and will forever be the eternal
capital not only of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The Muslim world and the
Vatican have taken opposing positions and indeed, no major country recognizes
Israel’s claim to political sovereignty not only over eastern Jerusalem but
west Jerusalem as well. But on the ground, the situation on the Temple Mount
has been similar to what evolved from the Oslo Accords. The Temple Mount is
akin to Area B: Palestinian civil control with security in the hands of
Israel.
It is probably unique that, in the entire
history of the Holy Land, it is Israel, the state of the Jewish People, that
would be the first power to voluntarily yield up claims to any Holy Place. In
the previous centuries, England, Russia, France and Greece, among others, even
as secular polities, had been most forceful in extending their influence and
protection to the institutions of religion, especially in Jerusalem. Yet, the
country with the most ancient and valid of claims is willing to compromise and
yield on them.
Yaakov Englard, then Professor of Law at
the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and later Justice of the Supreme Court,
summed up succinctly the unique situation in which Israel had willingly placed
itself:
The particular complexity
of the problem of religious freedom in Israel can be illustrated by the
status of the Holy Places in Jerusalem. Moved by the spirit of liberalism,
tolerance and equality, the Knesset solemnly declared that Holy Places shall
be protected from desecration and from anything likely to violate the
freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places
sacred to them or their feelings.
But how can one implement
these worthy legislative intentions in a situation where the free access
from members of one religion means, in the eyes of another community, the
desecration of the Holy Place?...The Supreme Court of Israel had great
difficulties in handling these cases. It repeatedly upheld the orders issued
by local police authorities which prohibited public prayer by Jews on the
premises of the Temple Mount. The argument of public order and prevention
of violence on the part of the Muslims may be politically sound, but it can
hardly be reconciled with the solemn promise of free access to the Holy
Places. In substance, the prohibition of public prayer is a violation of the
principle of collective freedom of religion.58
The issue of the Temple Mount is but one
front in a major effort by the Palestinians and other Arabs to facilitate an
erasing of Jewish historical identity with the Land of Israel. Not only did
Israel sign an international agreement that, in principle at least, offers up
the Temple Mount to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan but the Palestinian
self-rule authority is eventually to administer, according to understandings
reached, other Holy Places such as Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Machpela
Cave in Hebron, under Israeli supervision, as part of projects of tourist
development. The fall of Joseph’s Tomb in October 2000 to Arab mobs, against
the terms of the Oslo Process agreements, is a negative indication for other
holy sites.
The current reawakened dispute over the
Temple Mount, could possibly, even probably, develop into even a greater
flashpoint of heightened political tensions. Ever since the Mandate period,
the Temple Mount and its perceived ramifications by Arab Moslems have been a
hidden agenda item in the clash of Zionism with the local Arab population. A
recent commentary pointed out that,
The conflict...in Jerusalem
is not religious; it is a national conflict that is sustained by religious
symbols. And the prize is sovereignty...as an icon, the Dome [of the Rock]
is a perfect fusion of religion and nationalism, since it is strongly
associated, in Muslim minds, with Saladin’s chivalrous liberation of
Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187...to gain sovereignty over
Jerusalem...would mean that the Arabs have scored an important victory over
the Zionist crusaders.59
Israel's illogical policy of prohibiting
any overt Jewish connection to the site, with the secular executive and
judicial institutions acting in tandem with the Rabbinical establishment, is
still a blatant infraction of the law and a distortion of the Jewish character
of the State of Israel. This distortion, even corruption, of the State’s
Jewish values is even obvious to the Arabs.
As in the parallel case of the
restrictions placed on the reopening of the Machpela Cave, the Rabin
government placed Israel on a collision course with elements of the Jewish
populace which are becoming more dissatisfied with its policies, not only on
the basis that they are dangerous from a security, economical and ecological
standpoint but that they are threatening elements of Jewish meta-historical
importance.
This policy, unaltered by the Netanyahu
government, has lead to a more ominous situation whereby the Palestinian
Authority has adopted a counter-policy to strip from Israel additional holy
sites. During the recent riots, Joseph’s Tomb in Shchem fell to Arabs who
immediately attempted to turn it into a mosque after destroying previous
Jewish elements. The 7th century synagogue in Jericho was torched twice and
Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem has been the target of repeated gun attacks. The
latter has been awarded an Arabic name, Masjd Billal ibn-Rabah, and Fatah
literature is quite open about intentions to drive Jews away from this and
other sacred locations. Not only is this in direct opposition to the signed
Oslo pact, but it highlights the folly of Israel’s establishment to its
actions to ignore the potency of holy sites.
The issue of the Temple Mount, thrust to
the fore at the Camp David II deliberations, and this only because of the
Muslim onslaught to destroy any Jewish remnant there through their massive
construction program, is at a point where the Israeli establishment is forced
to choose: to either ignore its importance to the fabric of Jewish historical
and political self-identification or to capitulate, in the name of compromise
and self-abnegation.
Endnotes
|
1 |
L.G.A. Cust, The Status Quo in the Holy Places,
p.46, reprinted as a facsimile edition, Ariel, Jerusalem, 1980. |
|
2 |
H.C. 67/93. See also “Symposium, Temple Mount Faithful v.
Attorney-General, et al”, The Catholic University of America Law Review,
Vol. 45, No. 3, Spring 1996, pp. 861-941. |
|
3 |
Radio Kol Israel, Morning News Diary, October 3, 2000;
Ha'Aretz, October 12, 2000, p. 7A. |
|
4 |
Washington Declaration, July 25, 1994, Para. B-3, and in
Israel-Jordan Peace Agreement, Article 9 (2). Interestingly, 9 (3) commits
the parties to “act together to promote... freedom of worship.” |
|
5 |
Ha’Aretz, October 25, 1996 and
see fuller treatment of the Jordan-PA rivalry in I. Zilberman, “The Temple
Mount: Jordan’s Changing Role”, Jerusalem Post, November 11, 1990,
p.6 and Makor Rishon, August 28, 1998. |
|
6 |
Lola Keilani, “Keeping the Peace Cool”, Al-Ahram Weekly,
August 31-September 6, 2000. |
|
7 |
Samuel II, 24:24. |
|
8 |
Genesis, 14:18; 22:2; 22:14. |
|
9 |
Midrash Raba, Genesis, 79:7. |
|
10 |
Jerusalem Talmud, Chagiga, 3:6. |
|
11 |
Z. Vilnai, “Jews Who Entered the Temple Mount in Earlier
Generations” in Sefer Shalom Sivan (in Hebrew), Kiryat Sefer,
Jerusalem, 1984 and Ben-Tzion Dinberg, “A Synagogue and Study Hall for
Jews On the Temple Mount” in Zion (in Hebrew), Vol. III, The
Society for the History and Ethnology of the Land of Israel, Jerusalem,
1929, pp. 54-87. |
|
12 |
M. Benvenisti, Jerusalem, The Torn City, Isratypset,
Jerusalem, 1976, p. 101. See also Yoel Cohen, “The Political Role of the
Israeli Chief Rabbinate in the Temple Mount Question” in Jewish
Political Studies Review, 11:1-2 (Spring 1999), pp. 101-126 and Rabbis
Lior, Drukman and Ariel, “Voice from the Sacred Hall” (in Hebrew) in
L’Chatchila, 80, 24 Av 5760. |
|
13 |
H.C. 222/68, Chugim Leumi’im v. Minister of Police (1970),
Piskei Din 24(2), p. 141. |
|
14 |
Shmuel Berkovits, The Battle for the Holy Places (in
Hebrew), Hed Artzi, Or Yehuda, 2000, p. 322. |
|
15 |
El-Yarmuk newspaper, October 18,
1925 in Central Zionist Archives, File S/25, p. 748. |
|
16 |
Y. Porat, The Emergence of the Arab Palestine National
Movement (in Hebrew), Am Oved, 1976, I, p. 219 and Shulamit Eliash,
“The Temple Mount as Part of the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1922-1933”, in
Tradition, 26(1), Fall 1991, p. 25. |
|
17 |
S. Dotan, A Land in the Balance, MOD, Tel Aviv,
1993, pp. 41-47; Sefer Hahagana (in Hebrew), Volume II, 1, p. 314.
See also R. Peters, Islam and Colonialism, The Doctrine of Jihad in
Modern History, Mouton, The Hague, 1979, pp. 94-104. |
|
18 |
Emmanuel Sivan, Arab Political Myths (in Hebrew), Am
Oved, 1988, Chapter 3. |
|
19 |
B.A. Boustany, The Palestine Mandate, Invalid and
Impracticable, American Press, Beirut, 1936, p.58 and N. Aruri, ed.,
Occupation – Israel Over Palestine, Zed Books, London, 1984, pp.
75-91. |
|
20 |
Voice of Palestine Radio, August 18, 1994, in Jerusalem
Post, August 24, 1994. See too, Martin Gilbert, “Jerusalem, A Tale of
One City” in New Republic, November 14, 1994, pp. 17-24. |
|
21 |
A.H. Palazzi, The Jewish-Muslim Dialogue and the
Question of Jerusalem, Policy Study No. 7, Institute of the World
Jewish Congress, Jerusalem, 1997, pp. 5 & 23. |
|
22 |
Article 14 of the Mandate. |
|
23 |
Benvenisti, op. cit., p. 257. |
|
24 |
February 18, 1994. |
|
25 |
Ha’Aretz, July 18, 1993. |
|
26 |
The Jerusalem Report, October 21,
1993. |
|
27 |
Raphael Israeli, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the Public
Square” in Jewish Political Review, 11:3-4, Fall 1999, pp. 142-162. |
|
28 |
Ha’Aretz, September 17, 2000, p.
A3. |
|
29 |
Yediot Ahronot, November 2, 2000. |
|
30 |
Shmuel Dothan, A Land in the Balance, MOD Books, Tel
Aviv, 1993, p. 45 and also Avraham Sela, “The ‘Wailing Wall’ Riots (1929)
as a Watershed in the Palestine Conflict”, Truman Institute Reprints, in
The Muslim World, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 102, January-April 1994. |
|
31 |
Ha’Aretz, October 10, 1996. |
|
32 |
Karen Armstrong, “The Holiness of Jerusalem: Asset or
Burden”, Journal of Palestine Studies, XXVII, No. 3, Spring 1998.
See also Marshall Berger, “Religion and Politics in Jerusalem”, Journal
of International Affairs, Vol. 50 No. 1, Summer 1996, pp. 90-118. |
|
33 |
Ha’Aretz Weekend Magazine,
October 13, 1995, p. 24. |
|
34 |
“Al HaMaapilim BaHar”, HaTzofeh, May 26,
1995; HaLishkah, No. 54, September 2000, pp. 6-7. |
|
35 |
For an expanded discussion of the tension between Gush
Emunim and the Rabbinic establishment see I. Lustick, For the Land and
the Lord, Council on Foreign Relations, NY, 1988, pp. 168-176;
224-225. |
|
36 |
Maariv, October 13, 1997. |
|
37 |
Ha’Aretz, June 26, 2000. |
|
38 |
Kol Ha’Ir, January 15, 1997;
Ha’Aretz, December 28, 1999. |
|
39 |
Record of correspondence with the author. |
|
40 |
Maariv, January 23, 1997. |
|
41 |
Ha’Aretz, October 16, 1998;
Maariv, November 20, 2000. |
|
42 |
Jerusalem Post, August 11, 1994;
Ha’Aretz, January 4, 1999. |
|
43 |
Kol Ha’Ir, October 2, 1998. For
Background on Christian pro-Temple Mount attitudes see G.E. Arvidson,
Rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple, Foundation for Biblical Research,
1983; L. Dolphin, “The Importance of the Temple Mount to the Christians”,
1984; and “The Mystery of the Temple Mount”, Middle East Intelligence
Digest Supplement, August 1994. |
|
44 |
Berkovits, op. cit., p. 107. |
|
45 |
H. Shanks, “Protect the Temple Mount”, The Washington
Post, July 17, 2000. |
|
46 |
IsraelWire Daily Report, June 22, 2000. |
|
47 |
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida (PA), August
10, 2000; Al-Ayyam (PA), August 10, 2000; Al-Quds
(Jerusalem), July 20, 2000; Al-Hayat (London-Beriut), July 27, 2000
as quoted in Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Special
Dispatch No. 121, August 28, 2000, <www.memri.org>. |
|
48 |
The Jerusalem Times, September 1,
2000. |
|
49 |
Ha’Aretz, September 4, 2000.
|
|
50 |
Los Angeles Times, September 6,
2000. |
|
51 |
Reuters, September 6, 2000. |
|
52 |
AFP, September 11, 2000. |
|
53 |
IsraelWire, September 11, 2000; Jerusalem Post,
September 13, 2000. |
|
54 |
Associated Press, August 25, 2000. |
|
55 |
AFP, September 7, 2000. |
|
56 |
Ha’Aretz, September 13, 2000. |
|
57 |
R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, “The Meaning of Jerusalem to Jews,
Christians and Muslims”, Israel Information Center, 1995, pp. 20-21, a
slightly revised version was published in Jaarbericht Ex Orient Lux 23,
Leiden, 1973-74. |
|
58 |
Yitzhak Englard, The American Journal of Comparative Law,
Vol. 35, 1987. |
|
59 |
Margalit, Avishai, “The Odds Against Barak” in The New
York Review of Books, September 21, 2000, pp. 6-10, and see also
Sason, M., “Jerusalem - The Battle Over Sovereignty”, (in Hebrew),
Maariv, Hayom section, July 8, 1994, p. |
