Court urged to halt Mount work
By Dan Izenberg

JERUSALEM (March 9) - The public campaign to stop illegal Wakf work on the Temple Mount took a dramatic turn yesterday when a non-partisan group of public figures, including former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek and authors Yizhar Smilenski and Amos Oz, petitioned the High Court of Justice, asking it to order the government to enforce the law.

The petitioners, who are members of the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, charged that Islamic authorities had been flouting the rules for years, and especially since November 1999.

"The Moslem Wakf and the Islamic Movement in Israel have been carrying out many projects on the Temple Mount which have caused enormous damage to antiquities," the suit said.

"During this period, dozens of trucks loaded with construction material and floor tiles have entered the Temple Mount area and many have left the site, carrying a total of 15,000 cubic meters of debris and earth saturated with archaeological artifacts from every era," it added.

The aim of the work was to turn the site into an exclusively Moslem holy site, the Committee charged.

Among others who signed the petition were Avi Ravitzky, head of the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University, Yitzhak Hofi and Zvi Zamir, former Mossad heads, former Tel Aviv Mayor Shlomo Lahat, former IDF Chief of General Staff Dan Shomron and former MK Meir Pa'il.

The committee, which also includes many leading archaeologists, demanded that the government enforce the law, resume supervision of the site by the Antiquities Authority and ensure that no archaeological artifacts are harmed. It said construction, renovation, excavation, flooring and demolition work on the Temple Mount should be immediately halted and that no more such work be done without a permit from the Antiquities Authority and Jerusalem municipal planning officials. It also demanded that Antiquities Authority supervisors return to the site immediately.

The petitioners called on the court to issue an urgent temporary restraining order suspending all work on the Temple Mount immediately and prohibiting heavy equipment, trucks and construction material from entering the Temple Mount and archaeological artifacts, dirt and debris from leaving it.

They warned that "ongoing and extremely grave damage is being inflicted on the antiquities on the Temple Mount. Rare archaeological artifacts are being cursorily destroyed by the giant scale activities of the Moslem Wakf and the Islamic Movement in Israel, the aim of which is to turn the entire site into an exclusively Moslem holy place." The petitioners wrote that they were aware that the High Court did not intervene in law enforcement issues unless the state's behavior was "unfounded and utterly unreasonable." This is such a case, they charged.