My Considered Afterthought

Written in Fall 2004 to accompany my Temple Mount monograph:-


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.