Court orders
review of Temple Mount excavations
By Dan Izenberg
JERUSALEM (February 2) - A government committee established last
week to study the situation on the Temple Mount will investigate allegations
that the Wakf is conducting new excavations underneath the Mosque of Omar and
Al-Aksa Mosque, according to a High Court of Justice ruling yesterday.
Justices Tova Strassberg-Cohen, Dalia Dorner and Jacob Turkel gave the Temple
Mount Faithful group, which petitioned the High Court demanding that the
alleged construction be stopped and its perpetrators punished, one day to
submit precise details and evidence to back up their charges. The committee
will then have nine days to investigate the matter and submit an affidavit with
its findings to the court.
State representative Osnat Mandel, who revealed the establishment of the
committee in the state's written response to the petition, said it would be
headed by a representative of the Internal Security Ministry and include
representatives of the police, the General Security Service, the Antiquities
Authority, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Justice Ministry.
Mandel told the judges the committee would investigate "how matters are
handled" on the Temple Mount, including relations between the Wakf and
Israeli authorities. Since September 28, 2000, the Wakf has barred Jews from
visiting the Temple Mount, including representatives of the Antiquities
Authority, which is responsible for supervising and protecting the archeological
resources on the site.
Recently, the news media have reported allegations that the Wakf is excavating
underneath the Mosque of Omar and digging a tunnel to link the ancient Al-Aksa
Mosque and the Solomon's Stables Mosques, thus destroying archeological
remnants from the period of the Jewish holy temples.
After several days of embarrassed silence, the police and the Antiquities
Authority denied the charges and announced that the Wakf had dug two separate
tunnels, each 40 centimeters deep, beneath the Omar and Al-Aksa mosques to
replace faulty water pipes.
Despite the denials, the Temple Mount Faithful movement petitioned the High
Court on January 24, demanding that the state enforce the law and punish those
responsible for the alleged illegal construction.
Mandel charged that the petition was baseless. "We know all the
facts," she told the judges. "We have an affidavit from the head of
the Jerusalem District Police, who personally examined the site. The
petitioners do not have an affidavit. They have nothing. They have no concrete
information."
The court told the petitioner, represented by attorney Naftali Wurzberger, that
it had not given the state enough time to reply to the allegations of illegal
construction and asked the committee established by Prime Minister Ehud Barak
to look into the charges.
However, it did not accept the state's response at face value. "The public
receives its information from the press, and there is a sense that there are
excavations," said Dorner. "What you say is not precise," Turkel
told Mandel. "The petitioners have included press clippings including
charges by highly respectable figures."
He was referring to a letter written last month by senior archaeologists and
others, including S. Yizhar, A.B. Yehoshua, Haim Guri, Avi Ravitzki, Yitzhak
Hofi, and Shlomo Lahat, demanding that Barak stop the alleged excavations.
Wurzberger told the court that he did not accept the police affidavit because
the district commander was not an archeologist. "I demand that the
Antiquities Authority see what is going on there," he said. "If they
say there are no excavations, we will withdraw the petition."
Strassberg-Cohen said the court would reconvene within about two weeks.