Police: No tunnel being dug on Temple Mount
By Etgar Lefkovits

JERUSALEM (January 23) - As the controversy over the lack of archeological supervision over various Islamic Wakf construction projects on the Temple Mount rages, police yesterday rejected claims that the Wakf has started a new tunnel without Israeli approval.

"I can categorically say that there is no tunnel being dug on the Temple Mount," said Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby, who visited the site for two hours yesterday morning after Israel Radio reported that a tunnel was being dug underneath Al-Aksa Mosque in the direction of Solomon's Stables.

The report came just 24 hours after news of work being done in another area of the Mount: the raised platform near the Dome of the Rock, where tradition holds that the Temple complex stood, an area that has not been touched since at least the Six Day War.

Police confirmed and photographed this work, which they said is no more than the replacement of a water pipe.

Spurred into action by the reports of ongoing construction, the directorate of the Antiquities Authority held an urgent meeting last night, and called on the government to allow its archaeologists back to the site.

"Out of deep concern over the fate of the antiquities on the Temple Mount... we call on the government of Israel to prevent any further damage to the antiquities, and allow Authority officials to efficiently and continuously undertake archaeological supervision at the site," a statement released by the group said.

Jon Seligman, the archeologist responsible for the supervision of the site for the Antiquities Authority and who has been prevented from ascending the Mount by police since the outbreak of violence, said that the work on the raised portion of the mount - even just the replacement of a water pipe - is cause for "deep concern."

"Any work carried out there, to whatever depth, must be carried out with archeological supervision," he said yesterday.

Seligman said that because he is not allowed to visit the site, he is forced to rely on police reports.

But archeologists from the Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, who have been monitoring the construction work for the past year, said the police is simply unaware of subterranean tunnel excavation work. The confusion would be cleared up, archeologists argued, if they and journalists are allowed on the Mount.

"The police are not archeologists and are unable to determine the extent of the damage done to antiquities. With all due respect to the security forces, it is not up to the police to decide what is archeological damage and what is not," said Prof. Gabi Barkai of Bar-Ilan University. "There are professional people who are trained for this job, let them do it."