In August 1967, the Chief Rabbis of Israel, Isser Yehuda Unterman and Yitzhak Nissim, in concert with other leading rabbis, asserted that "For generations we have warned against and refrained from entering any part of the Temple Mount." As a result, most observant Jews refrain from entering the Temple Mount. Instead, they pray en masse at the Western Wall. However, in a later period, Chief Rabbis Mordechai Eliahu and Shlomo Goren expressed the view that Jews should be allowed to enter and pray in parts of the Temple Mount where the Temple was not situated, notably in the northern and southern expanses of the Mount.

After Israel implemented the 1993 Oslo Agreement with the PLO, the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) of Yasser Arafat began to set up offices in Jerusalem which, according to the agreement, remained under Israel's sole jurisdiction. In fact, the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of October 26, 1994 (Article 9) declared that "Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines." Yet, after Oslo, PA penetration of Jerusalem deepened and included the appointment of a Palestinian minister for Waqf affairs, Hasan Tahbub, and a Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem, 'Ikrimi Sabri.

During this period, Jordan steadily withdrew its religious authority over the Temple Mount, ceding control to Palestinian-appointed officials. By the time Yasser Arafat launched his intifada violence against Israel in September 2000, the Palestinian takeover of authority on the Temple Mount was complete. As a result, the Israel Antiquities Authority has been prevented from entering the Temple Mount area, since the Waqf, as the practical custodian of the site, was empowered to decide who was permitted entry and who was forbidden.

So ironically, in some rarified political sense, Israel has sovereignty over the Mount, but any practical control over the destruction of its own heritage has been held hostage to Muslim outrage at any attempt to interfere with the workings of the WAQF. Outrage which was inflamed by Arafat to consolidate his control over Arab Jerusalem, as in the "tunnel riots" of 1996.

Much of the archeological remains of the Jewish temples have been systematically destroyed by the WAQF, in the process of enlarging the mosque and building a parking lot, while the Israeli government avoided confrontation. Archeologists - many of whom are gentiles - were aghast at the destruction, which proceeded for years in defiance of accepted rules of scholarship and Israeli law about doing construction work around archeological sites.

. . . the Waqf brought a bulldozer—anathema to any qualified archaeologist, especially in such a sensitive area as the Temple Mount— and dug a trench for a new utility line, simply throwing out the excavated material. During this unauthorized excavation, the Waqf hit a huge ancient wall 6 feet wide and 16 feet long. As word spread of this devastation, the deputy director of the Israel Department of Antiquities went to the site, but raised no objection. He simply reported on what he saw—probably a Herodian wall that enclosed the Second Temple complex. The wall was removed by the Waqf without any scientific investigation or report (without even a photograph), leaving only a gaping hole, later filled in by the Waqf.

In 1986, the Temple Mount Faithful filed a suit in Israel's Supreme Court against both the Waqf and the government, alleging these and other Waqf violations of Israel's antiquities and building laws by the damage or destruction of evidence from Solomon's Temple (the First Temple), Herod's Temple (the Second Temple), and other ancient structures. The Waqf of course simply ignored the suit. It neither appeared nor responded. The real thrust of the suit, however, was against the government, seeking to have it take action against the Waqf.

Initially the suit was dismissed when the attorney general and the Jerusalem municipality claimed they were considering taking legal action against the Waqf. When no action was taken, however, the case was re-filed. The Supreme Court took seven years to decide the case. In November 1993, the court ruled that the Waqf had violated antiquities and other applicable Israeli laws on 35 occasions, causing irreversible destruction of important archaeological remains. The court acknowledged that these violations continued even after suit had been filed. Although the court said that the Antiquities Authority (the department had since changed its name) had repeatedly disregarded the Waqf's violations, it refused to order the government to take legal action against the Waqf, saying it was confident that Israeli authorities would correct their past errors (i.e., inaction) in the future. Translation: The issue was too hot to handle, even for the court. The petition was dismissed.

In late 1999, the Waqf commenced its most ambitious transformation of the Temple Mount. Under the initial guise of creating an emergency exit for a little-known underground area known as Solomon's Stables that is sometimes used as a mosque, the Waqf bulldozed a cavernous entrance more than 200 feet long and 75 feet wide and removed more than 6,000 tons of archaeologically rich dirt. Heavy equipment and large trucks were required to haul away the excavated material. They entered the Temple Mount unhindered. Hundreds of truckloads of dirt were carted off, frequently in the dead of night, and dumped into the Kidron Valley and the municipal dump.

It has not been updated for over a year, but Har-habayt.org is still the best source for pictures of the excavations.

Grand Mufti Ikrima Al-Sabri was appointed by Arafat to the WAQF to administer the excavations, superceding the Jordanian WAQF appointee, Adnan Husseini. Al-Sabri has praised child suicide bombers and approved expedited executions of Palestinian "criminals." He has said that there is no evidence of a Jewish temple or "even a single stone indicating Jewish History." Here is a video of Al-Sabri calling for the destruction of America and Britain, two weeks before 9-11. (via Palestinian Media Watch)

In 2001, Rep. Eric Cantor, R.-Va., with 16 co-sponsors, introduced the Temple Mount Preservation Act, H.R. 2566, intended to withhold aid to the Palestinian Authority until it stopped the excavations, but aid to the PA continued.

(My googling turned up an article on Rep. Cantor's effort by none other than recently murdered journalist Steven Vincent, who, as many of us know by now, used to be primarily a reporter in the NYC art world until 9-11 galvanized him to travel to Iraq. Vincent's tone here is of a piece with the Western culturati skepticism of Israeli claims and motives and sympathy with the Palestinians. One wonders if he changed his mind about Israel as well after 9-11.)

Over the past several years, there have been numerous warnings of collapse of the wall as a result of the haphazard and badly engineered excavations. An earthquake produced more structural damage, and a part of the wall did develop a bulge which did result in a partial collapse. (Pictures here.) The WAQF was allowed to control the repair.

The official Israeli response (much of it under the Barak government) was of a piece with its general bewilderment about Intifada II:

On the one hand, Israeli officialdom has turned a blind eye to the removal of tons of earth, which has dislodged a delicate structural balance at a place where reinforced steel cement was unknown for two millennia and more. . . . Israel, on the other hand, has consistently refused to acknowledge any overt Jewish or Israeli identification with the site. The Religious Affairs Ministry does not supervise, the Antiquities Authority does not oversee and the police restrict themselves to incidents of stones raining down on Jewish worshippers.

. . . Dayan, in the original act of surrender, sought to avoid turning the Arab-Israel conflict into a religious war. But it always was a conflict with a strong religious underpinning. The Jews simply assumed that the Arabs would do as we do; would be as secular as we could; would act as rational as we would. And so, the Chief Rabbinate continued to ban entrance even though the Halacha permitted entrance, at least to certain sections of the Mount. The Supreme Court provided legal justification for the trampling of Jewish civil rights. The police blamed Jews for disturbances of the peace. The media labelled any Temple Mount activist a fanatic.

This attitude continued in the refusal to fund the archeological evaluation of the artifacts in the garbage dump.

This is a good summary of the past five years of damage, Israeli attempts to offer repair, and Muslim accusations, denials of responsibility, and refusal to accept inspections or aid.

However, two years ago, things began to change as a result of Israel's offensive against the Intifada. Ha'aretz reported in 2003 that

Israel has partially restored its sovereignty over the Temple Mount. The Palestinian security forces, which have been hit hard by the Israel Defense Force's activity in the territories, have been weakened in Jerusalem, as well. The status of the Israel Police on the Mount has been reinforced. When Uzi Landau was minister of public security, the gates of the Mount were sealed off to the passage of construction materials and heavy machinery. The huge electric saw that was used by the Muslims to saw the stones that had been excavated in the compound, was neutralized and removed. But still the Temple Mount remains closed to visitors.

. . . Sheikh Kamal Hatib, the deputy to Ra'ed Salah, the head of the Northern faction of the Islamic Movement (who has been under arrest for several weeks), says the reality has changed. "There is no intention of opening the Mount in the future to Jews. It isn't temporary. It's permanent. . . . Renewal of the visits would grant legitimacy to the Jewish claim regarding the existence of remnants of the Temple beneath the mosques, and may even be liable to create the conditions that would enable Jewish extremists to strike the mosques. If the Israeli government unilaterally decides to open it, it would be a declaration of holy war, religious war, a war initiated by Israel. Perhaps we would lose in the early rounds of this war, but, in the end, we will win." Hatib vehemently rules out any possibility of reaching a deal with Israel, such as permitting Arabs from the territories to visit the Temple Mount - currently, they are unable to do so, due to the numerous closures - in exchange for reopening the Mount to everyone.

"Nobody - not Arafat, not Abu Mazen, not Dahlan - would agree to such an understanding," Hatib says, enraged. "They would be thrown out. Muslims around the world would see to it. No one authorized them to negotiate on Al Aqsa."

But in the end, Arafat and his minions overreached, and then he died. A year ago, without any fanfare, several Arab nations got fed up:

Israel has ended the Palestinian Authority's penetration of eastern Jerusalem and its control of the Muslim Waqf on the Temple Mount, restoring Jordanian religious administration of the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound.1 Israel's reversal of Arafat's ten-year reign of terror against Jerusalem's Arab residents and his authoritarian dictates to the Muslim Waqf - that had turned Jerusalem into the religious and national epicenter of the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state - has important political ramifications for both Palestinians and Israelis. Despite only a partial restoration of the status quo in Jerusalem, the return of Jordan's traditionally moderating influence over the Muslim Waqf administration sends an important message to those on both sides of the Jordan River and suggests the possibilities that a stronger Jordanian-Palestinian link could offer in the management of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Look for greater Jordanian influence on the West Bank as Palestinians exhausted by political extremism seek a more lawful society, and less wanton destruction on the Temple Mount.

Some pictures of a visit to Har HaBayit since restrictions were eased a few months ago.

Last December, concern about further collapse spurred new archeologist-approved structural changes near the Kotel, and most recently, the archeologist who discovered the Ketef Hinnom amulets mobilized funding and workers to sift through some of the rubble which the WAQF had dumped in the Kidron Valley, revealing many significant artifacts, but - as any archeologist can tall you - their meaning can only be fully understood in situ. Too much damage has already been done.

The artifact rescue effort is still continuing; return to the top of this post for info on how to help.