Construction at Temple Mount continuing, panel charges
By Etgar Lefkovits

JERUSALEM (July 6) - Nearly four months after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took office, Islamic Wakf construction work continues unabated on the Temple Mount, archeologists from the non-partisan Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities charged yesterday. Police vociferously reject the claim.

Reinforcing its continuing reports of archaeological damage to the Temple Mount, the group provided the Post with pictures, taken last week, which show, in clear view, a large stone cutter in place near the Golden Gate.

Another picture shows a tractor dumping boulders near the stone cutter, while a third shows a newly renovated staircase and excavated stones and surfaces.

"We see that the Islamic Wakf is continuing its work on the Temple Mount even since the new government has come to power in Israel," said Dr. Eilat Mazar of Hebrew University's archeology department, and a leading member of the committee. With the help of the stone cutter, the Wakf, she said, is "cutting down antique stones, for its various renovation, surfacing and construction work" at Judaism's holiest site.

A spokesman for Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau said that, to the best of his knowledge, "no work has been going at the site for the last several months." Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said yesterday that the stone cutter has been at the site "for over a year" and that the surfacing work, which he said has "long stopped" was carried out in the past with the permission of the political echelon.

The police spokesman, who has consistently rebuffed and rejected reports by the committee of archaeologists, said that the stone cutter was "not meant to cut boulders from the Mount" for the Wakf's surfacing work and had been slicing rocks from outside the area.

However, even the Antiquities Authority's Jerusalem regional archeologist, Jon Seligman said he understood the boulders being used were old paving stones from the Temple Mount that originated from Wakf work done at the Solomon's Stables in 1996, and which have since been lying in piles on the Mount.

"These are not stones from the Byzantine period, but stones that have been lying around," he said. He also noted that, since he, like all other non-Muslims, has not been able to go to the site since last September due to police concerns over violence, he can only base his estimate on secondhand information provided by the police, and pictures he has seen. Seligman added that he had not seen the latest pictures.