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The Astonishing Israeli Concession of 1967
(Atlantic) Yossi Klein Halevi - The astonishing, untold story of the battle for Jerusalem was how ill-prepared Israel was for the most mythic battle of its history: The paratroopers' conquest of east Jerusalem and the Old City, including the two sites holiest to Judaism, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. Few battles with such fateful consequences were as haphazard and unplanned. Even more astonishing was the Israeli decision, at the moment of victory, to concede sovereignty over the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. Colonel Motta Gur's half-track led the attack into the Old City, crashing through the massive bronze doors onto the Via Delarosa, then turning left and onto the Temple Mount. Gur rushed up a flight of stairs leading to a large plaza - the golden Dome of the Rock and the silver-domed al-Aqsa. Gur radioed headquarters: "The Temple Mount is in our hands." He wasn't just making a military report, but staking a historic claim. The focus of centuries of Jewish longing, the place toward which Jews prayed no matter where they lived, was now in Israeli hands. The brigade's chief communications officer retrieved an Israeli flag from his pouch and asked Gur whether he should hang it over the Dome of the Rock. "Yalla," said Gur, go up. Two officers climbed to the top of the building and victoriously fastened the Israeli flag onto a pole topped with an Islamic crescent. Except then the flag was quickly and unceremoniously lowered. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, watching the scene through binoculars from Mount Scopus, urgently radioed Gur and demanded: Do you want to set the Middle East on fire? It is, in retrospect, an astonishing moment of religious restraint. The Jewish people had just returned to its holiest site, from which it had been denied access for centuries, only to effectively yield sovereignty at its moment of triumph. For all the pain many Israelis feel in being denied the right to pray at what is, after all, Judaism's holiest site, every Israeli government, including on the political right, has upheld the status quo.