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Palestinians Continue to Harm Temple Mount Antiquities

(Israel Hayom) Nadav Shragai - In 2004, Israel's High Court of Justice ruled in favor of a petition filed by a Jewish group to protect Temple Mount antiquities in Jerusalem. The Committee for the Prevention of Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount sought to prevent the removal by the Islamic Wakf of some 3,000 tons of dirt and rubble rich in archaeological findings from the Mount. In 1999, the Palestinians, using a fleet of 400 trucks, removed excavated dirt from the Temple Mount in the dead of night. Thousands of volunteers have since sifted through that rubble, turning up about half a million tiny finds from the First and Second Temple eras. During this year's holy month of Ramadan, hundreds of Muslims brought up piles of rubble from the excavation of Solomon's Stables 20 years ago, which the High Court ruled could not be removed from the Temple Mount, and started to pick through it, removing stones to use to build terraces. Only the alertness of the members of the Committee for the Prevention of Destruction of Antiquities stopped the Waqf in its tracks. The police have now set up a lookout on top of the Golden Gate from which they can observe the mounds of rubble. The Waqf demands that the observation post be removed, claiming that it violated the status quo. The writer is a journalist and commentator who has documented the dispute over Jerusalem for 30 years.
2018-07-04 00:00:00
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