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Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1004
Keep the Temple Mount Open
(Israel Hayom) Dan Margalit - From an engineering point of view, the Mughrabi Bridge is unsound. It poses a danger to the personal safety of those who use it. At one point, Israel wanted to build an iron bridge in its place, but King Abdullah of Jordan asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from doing so, and Netanyahu complied. It is in Jerusalem's interest to preserve the delicate fabric of our relations with Amman. The Arab position on this issue is utterly negative. They seek to remove Israel's right to make any decisions regarding the site. Arabs want to shield their eyes from archaeological evidence that demonstrates a Jewish connection to the place. For instance, archaeologists found a stone with a Hebrew inscription indicating the place where a Temple priest stood and blew a trumpet to proclaim the onset of the Sabbath. The stone probably formed part of the Temple Mount's banister and rolled onto the street below at the time of the Second Temple's destruction, where it lay buried for almost 2,000 years. Nor do the Arabs want to see the Western Wall tunnels, or the many ancient Hebrew inscriptions in and around the Temple Mount. Their greatest fear is that continued professional archaeological work will uncover remnants of the Second Temple - a building that Yasser Arafat brazenly proclaimed never existed.