Chief Rabbi demands state probe of digging on Mount

By Nadav Shragai
Ha'aretz Correspondent and Itim

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron yesterday demanded that Prime Minister Ehud Barak set up a commission of inquiry to investigate what kind of digging is really being done on the Temple Mount.

All digging on the Mount should be frozen until the commission has completed its work, he added.

Bakshi-Doron issued this call following an open meeting with the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, which was attended by several other rabbis.

At the meeting, Dr. Shmuel Berkowitz, a member of the committee, said the committee has photographs taken in the last few days, showing a section of the tunnel that the Waqf (Muslim religious trust) has started to build between the ruins of the ancient Al Aqsa Mosque and Solomon's Stables. However, he said, he cannot release the pictures lest this endangers the life of the source who supplied them.

"The committee has pictures that incontrovertibly demonstrate activity under the Al Aqsa Mosque, activity that is destroying archaeological remains," said another committee member, archaeologist Dr. Gabi Barkai. "I would be happy to go to the site with the police, who are having trouble locating these things, and show them what we are talking about."

Another committee member, Yisrael Caspi, charged that both Barak and Public Security Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami are perfectly aware of the "troubling reality on the Mount," but prefer to ignore it.

According to Barkai, the Waqf has paved thousands of square meters of the mount. This in itself would have caused no harm, he said, except that "in preparation, they lowered the level of the mount by many dozens of centimeters, thereby damaging antiquities from the days of the First Temple, the Hasmonean Kingdom, the Herodian period and the Roman, Christian and Muslim periods."

In another area of the Mount - the "Ramah" region where the Dome of the Rock is located, and where many believe the Temple formerly stood - the Waqf is raising the floor, and this also damages antiquities, Barkai said.

Dr. Eilat Mazar, an archaeologist affiliated with the Hebrew University, stressed that the committee is made up of people from all parts of the political spectrum, whose one concern is preventing the destruction of antiquities on the Mount. "For more than a year, we have been requesting a meeting with Prime Minister Barak, without success," she added.

At the meeting, Bakshi-Doron was also asked about the rabbinical committee set up to look into the possibility of establishing a synagogue on some part of the Temple Mount. Bakshi-Doron replied that, in his opinion, and in that of most members of the Chief Rabbinical Council, this is unfeasible, because Jews are not allowed to set foot even on the margins of the Mount.