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.