THE SEEDS OF CALAMITY - 27-Sep-96

(Article by Nadav Shragai, Ha'aretz, 27.09.96)

For many long years, the work Israel carried out in the Western Wall Tunnel and the Hasmonean Tunnel was one of the openest secrets in the world; almost every foreign visitor from the rank of ambassador and up was taken to the spot.

Some of those visitors would certainly be blushing today with shame, if the Foreign Ministry personnel were to reveal some of the words of praise and esteem showered by those very people including not a few Arabs and even the heads of the Waqf [the Islamic religious authority] and the Supreme Moslem Council, concerning the thousands of finds and archeological artifacts which Israel has retrieved from the depths of the earth.

However, the Waqf and the Islamic religious establishment will always oppose archeological excavations in the area, for much deeper reasons than the allegation about upsetting the foundations of the mosques as a result of the digging. The protests about changing the Moslem character of Jerusalem are derived from the basic concepts of Islam regarding the State of Israel.

The late Orientalist David Farhi, with whom Moshe Dayan concurred in laying down the arrangements prevailing till now on the Temple Mount, once said that, for generations, the Jews were tolerated in the Moslem world only as an enslaved people without the rights of a political status.

And the Orientalist Professor Moshe Sharon determined that in the eyes of Islam the establishment of Israel had violated all the rules concerning Islamic territory, Islamic holy sites, and the juridical status of the Jews, according to Islam. Israel was established on territory belonging to the "Dar al-Islam" in which there are Islamic holy sites. The Jews are not subordinate as it was decreed they should be and, gravest of all, they rule over Moslems. They are the sovereign in Jerusalem.

These elements have been incorporated in hundreds of sermons which religious clerics have delivered on the Temple Mount for the past 30 years, and in dozens of "fatwas" [religious rulings] published by Islamic clerics since the establishment of Israel, and more so since Jerusalem was reunified.

This religious outlook was reinforced by the close combination between religion and state prevailing in Islam, too; the saying "religion and the state are twins", attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, was given fuller expression in Jerusalem after 1967 over the issue of the Temple Mount.

Arab statesmen and Islamic religious leaders have turned the religion into an instrument to meddle in politics, and politics into an implement to meddle in religion.

That is more or less what is also happening now, before our very eyes. Since the events of 1929 [the widespread Arab rioting], the mosques on the Temple Mount ceased to serve as a place of worship and a purely religious symbol, and became one of the main national symbols of the struggle against Zionism.

Behind the scenes, it may perhaps be possible to reach understandings with the Waqf, but it is difficult to do this when the issue is the Temple Mount. In 1988, Israel tried for the first time to open an exit from the Hasmonean Tunnel on to Oneima Street, adjacent to the Temple Mount. What occurred then in the city and in the West Bank greatly resembles what has happened now, even though Waqf officials were invited to visit the tunnels before the opening was cut, toured them, and even examined the maps of the Israeli engineers. The attempt to coordinate the opening operation with Waqf officials failed this time, too, even though the Waqf had been offered the compensation of permission to open an additional gate to Solomon's Stables and the possibility of holding religious services in them.

The Waqf will always raise difficulties over excavations in the area of the Temple Mount; if the question depended on it, the Southern Wall and the Western Wall along its entire length would never have been uncovered and the Moslem heritage of Jerusalem, disclosed in these digs, would still be buried in the depths of the earth.

The allegations about upsetting the foundations of the mosques are utter nonsense: the Hasmonean aqueduct was hewn out of the rock thousands of years ago, and only now has been re-exposed. The work of removing sewage water and mud from this tunnel could not upset the foundation of anything, especially as the route of the tunnel does not pass under the Temple Mount perimeter, but west of it.

In contrast to similar events in the Temple Mount vicinity in the past, the wave of rioting this time was organized by the people of the Palestinian Authority. A senior police officer said this week "it was easier to do business with Jordan in the Temple Mount zone."