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The visit, by Professor Amos Kloner and Haim Guri to two underground chambers on the Temple Mount came at a time when unrestrained passions threaten not only a spiraling intifada but regional conflagration.
What prompted the visit were charges, by a committee made up of Israeli archaeologists and prominent intellectuals, that the Wakf -- the Muslim religious trust that administers the mount -- was secretly digging a tunnel that endangered ancient Jewish remains.
This was the latest in a series of charges by the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount. The committee was founded after the Wakf bulldozed tons of earth in October 1999 on the mount, the most sensitive archaeological site in the country, without archaeological supervision.
The purpose of the excavation was to create an emergency exit from a Muslim worship area developed in the underground space known as Solomon's Stables. Though Wakf officials say the excavated material was merely ancient fill, not stratified remains of archaeological value, archaeologists say even fill in such an important site should have been sifted through by hand before being removed.
COMPLAINTS
Recently, the committee has renewed its accusations against the Wakf, citing trenches being dug on the surface of the mount for infrastructure work, the removal of earth in order to create paved prayer areas on the mount surface and -- most ominously -- the tunnel. An Israel Radio reporter who gained access to the site reported seeing a tunnel equipped with electric lighting.
In an ironic turn of events, it was the police who came to the Wakf's defense. Since the start of the intifada in September, police have frequently engaged in violent skirmishes with rioting Muslims around the Temple Mount at the conclusion of Friday prayers. However, as enforcers of law and order, the police force is the one Israeli governmental agency with which the Wakf has ongoing dialogue; thus they are the only Israelis who have access to the mount when it is otherwise shut to non-Muslims, as it has been since the beginning of the intifada at the order of both the Wakf and the police.
The Jerusalem police and the Public Security Ministry issued a statement declaring that they ``completely reject the recent claims regarding excavations on the Temple Mount.'' Police spokesmen said they had searched for the alleged tunnel but found no signs of it.
They even provided the press with photographs of a shallow trench being dug for piping on the Temple Mount surface, to refute charges of massive digging.
The Wakf also denied that it was digging a tunnel, but defiantly added that if it chose to do so it would not need Israeli permission since the mount -- or the Haram al-Sharif, as Muslims call it -- was sovereign Muslim territory.
DENIAL REJECTED
It was in this superheated atmosphere that arrangements were made last week for the visit by archaeologist Kloner and Guri, one of Israel's leading poets.
Kloner, of the Hebrew University, is himself a member of the committee, which he joined, he says, out of concern for the fate of all the archaeological remains on the Temple Mount ``and not just for the Jewish remains.''
Kloner and Guri surveyed the two broad corridors leading up toward the center of the Temple Mount from the Double and Triple Gates in the southern wall of the mount, here also the southern wall of the Old City. During the Second Temple period, these two gates were the main entrances to the Temple Mount from the area of mikvaot, or purification baths, outside the southern wall.
The southern part of the mount, under which the corridors passed, was used for secular pursuits, such as money-changing for foreign pilgrims who wished to purchase birds for sacrifice. The Sanhedrin court was also situated there.
PRAYER AREAS
It was this space that the Wakf converted into the Massalam Marawani (Marawani Prayer Area) by cleaning it and adding lighting and rugs. The Marawani, it says, is not a separate mosque but part of the Aqsa compound which, in its entirety, is considered a mosque.
Similar renovations were made in the passageway leading up from the Double, or Hulda, Gates, to the west. This prayer area, lying partially beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque, was called Aqsa Kadima.
Reports reaching the committee said that the Wakf was cutting an approximately 65-yard-long tunnel to link up Aksa Kadima and the Marawani prayer areas. It was this that Kloner and Guri went down to look for.
After spending hours carefully examining both areas, Kloner emerged to report no sign of digging activity.
``If there was a tunnel, we would have seen it,'' he said. ``We didn't.''
UP TO SOMETHING
``We have hard evidence that they are carrying out excavations on a tremendous scale beneath the Temple Mount in order to prepare more prayer areas,'' she said.
Mazar declined to offer the evidence on the grounds that it might endanger lives. But members of the committee said tons of earth have been trucked out of the mount in recent months.
Jerusalem District archaeologist John Seligman said he is unaware of any such excavations, although he conceded that he cannot ascertain that definitively because he has no access to the mount.
Archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov, who assisted Mazar's late grandfather Prof. Binyamin Mazar in the massive excavations carried out at the foot of the mount for nine years after the Six Day War, said that right-wing political motives underpin the allegations put forward by some archaeologists on the committee.
``It wasn't the Muslims who destroyed the Temple,'' he noted acerbically. ``It was Titus.''
Temple Mount Investigated But No Tunnels Found
An archaeologist and a poet descended last month in Jerusalem into the innards of an explosive cache -- powerful enough to blow apart the Middle East -- to look for a sputtering fuse. When they emerged hours later, they announced that ground zero was dormant still. [Original headline: No evidence found of Temple Mount desecration]
Amidst growing fears that the Wakf might deliberately be destroying Jewish remains -- or that it was indifferent to damage inflicted to them during the land-development work -- writer Amos Oz, Guri and other prominent intellectuals joined the committee's efforts. The chief rabbis also added their voices to calls for government intervention.
The police denial was rejected by some members of the committee, who contended that Police Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, leading peace negotiations with the Palestinians, was unwilling to see a dispute break out over the Temple Mount.
In the mid-1990s, the Wakf converted both these underground spaces to prayer areas. The area inside the easternmost gates -- the Triple Gates -- became known in Crusader times as Solomon's Stables, although it was built a millennium after Solomon and was apparently reconstructed during the Muslim period.
Despite Kloner's findings, archaeologist Eilat Mazar, the prime force behind the committee, continues to contend that the Wakf is up to something.
Jerusalem Post News Service via Miami Herald / FL | By Abraham Rabinovich - February 7 2001
