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The southern wall of the Temple Mount has been in danger of collapse due to Waqf construction work. (Image courtesy of Holy Land Photos)
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| By Ellis Shuman February 4, 2004 |
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The discovery of large stones endowed with architectural elements unique to the Second Temple period in the midst of a Muslim construction site on Jerusalem's Temple Mount show that the Islamic Trust (Waqf) is ignoring the Jewish history of the site, leading archaeologists charged this week.
"There is no doubt that these are motifs from the Second Temple period. It is the different elements of the decoration that show this, combined with the style of the artistic work," said Hebrew University archaeologist Eilat Mazar, referring to photographs taken secretly by an Israeli photographer in an area being renovated and turned into a large mosque.
Army Radio's Yossi Milshtein took a Waqf- and police-escorted tour of the Temple Mount two weeks ago and, disguised as a Palestinian, entered areas off limits to Jews and Christians armed with a camera and a video recorder. He said in the newly constructed mosque, he saw on the ground, next to a large red carpet, two large stones with a grape leaf design.
Milshtein said the grapevine-engraved stones were photographed near an area known as Solomon's Stables, which archaeologists say was constructed by King Herod between 40 and 30 B.C.E.
"The stones are located in the wall, a wall they rebuilt after conducting renovations there," he said. "They are using it on the bottom of the wall, at the very bottom. This is a scandal that it is just used as a supporting stone."
Milshtein's 10-minute video was obtained by the Jerusalem Post and showed "piles of new stone slabs and two tractors inside the Temple Mount compound, as well as mounds of strewn ancient boulders on the ground, some of which were near and in piles of garbage materials," the newspaper reported. "In the video, a section of the ancient entranceway to Solomon's Stables looks like it is on the verge of collapse," the paper said.
"There is no archaeological supervision [of the work] and no plan or survey to see what the real condition of the Temple Mount is", Mazar said. "The Temple Mount is neglected, and it's just a matter of time before it collapses," she warned.
Mazar is a member of the Committee for the Preservation of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, a group advocating greater Israeli supervision of Islamic renovations.
Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby and Israel Antiquities Authority head Shuka Dorfman both said that there was currently no construction work taking place on the Temple Mount, aside from standard paving and renovation works, which have received approval from the political echelon, the Jerusalem Post reported. Dorfman said his archaeological inspectors were operating under "restricted conditions."
Charges of Temple Mount destruction were denied yesterday by the Waqf, which administers the holy site. "This is about politics and nothing else because of the sensitivity of Jerusalem," said Waqf director Adnan Al-Husseini.
"(Our) work was simply to consolidate the prayer area, to strengthen it," Husseini said. "There are no stones there from the Temple Mount."
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