Chief rabbis decry reputed Temple Mount digging
By Etgar Lefkovits and Haim Shapiro

JERUSALEM (January 24) - Israel's chief rabbis weighed in yesterday on reports of the Islamic Wakf's construction on the Temple Mount without archeological supervision, with Sephardic Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron calling on Prime Minister Ehud Barak to establish a state commission of inquiry into the Wakf's work on Judaism's holiest site, and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau charging that Israel made a historic mistake when it gave control over the holy site to the Moslem authority just after the Six Day War.

"It is clear that we join our voice to the cries to stop the construction work at what is Judaism's holiest site, especially when we see that there is a trend among certain extremists to destroy the historical evidence and the connection of the Jewish nation to the place," Bakshi-Doron said after meeting in his office with a group of archeologists from the Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, who have monitored construction work at the site.

"All the work going on at the site must be stopped until a state commission of inquiry can be convened to check into what happened there," the rabbi said, adding that he would ask for an urgent meeting with the prime minister and the attorney-general. "For every other issue in Israel, we see that commissions of inquiry are established. So certainly, there is room for such an investigation into this, the most sensitive of all places for the Jewish people."

But when asked if he had ever been up to the area himself, the rabbi answered demurely, "I wouldn't dare."

At the meeting, the archeologists from the Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities said they had photographs proving that construction work of a tunnel was going on at the Temple Mount.

"As archeologists we cannot sit in silence as large parts of our culture are being destroyed," said Prof. Gabi Barkai of Bar-Ilan University. "This is an issue which must set off alarm bells for any cultured person, across the political spectrum."

"Any nation who does not know how to safeguard its past has no possible future,"

Lau said in a message to Barak that claimed Israel made a "historic mistake" when it relinquished control of the Temple Mount to the Jordanian-appointed Wakf after the 1967 Six Day War.

After Israel captured east Jerusalem in the war, then-defense minister Moshe Dayan ordered that the keys to the Temple Mount be returned to the Moslems. He feared Israeli control could provoke a religious war with the entire Moslem world.

But Lau said Dayan made a terrible mistake.

"Handing over the keys of the Temple Mount to the Wakf was a major historic mistake over which generations will weep," Lau said in his message, in which he also accused Moslem authorities of systematically destroying archeological remains from the temples, Lau's spokesman Itzik Rath said.

Lau yesterday reacted to reports that Israel was ready to accept a special rule or joint authority over Jerusalem by saying he could not believe any Israeli diplomat would be so "stone-hearted" as to suggest that Israel share the authority over its holy places with anyone else.

He related to a rabbinical teaching according to which the stones of Jerusalem have "human hearts." It would be hard to believe, he said, that humans had hearts of stone.

The chief rabbi also said it was unthinkable that anyone in a position of authority in Israel would suggest even partially sharing authority over the holy shrines of Israel between the Jewish people and other nations. The proposal, he said, was unworthy, undesirable, and unrealistic. Merely thinking about it was painful, Lau said.

"The Western Wall and the Temple Mount are not anyone's private property. A people that does not know how to honor its roots has no right to dream and plan its future," he said.

Referring to Islam and Christianity, Lau said the Jewish people's bond to Jerusalem and the holy places was established before the other religions came into the world.

Meanwhile, an archeologist who was allowed onto the Mount as a one-time gesture by police said last night that he did not discern any construction of a tunnel between the Aksa Mosque and the area around Solomon's Stables, confirming what Jerusalem police reported Monday.

In a press briefing arranged hastily last night by Jerusalem police at the Western Wall Plaza, Prof. Amos Klone, who spent hours at the site yesterday afternoon with author Haim Guri - both of whom had signed the archeologist's petition - under what was apparently a special police arrangement, said he did not discern the construction of any tunnel.

Klone, who conceded that did not see the photos that the committee of archeologists have which show work being done, said that "we found no evidence of construction of a tunnel during our visit."

Archeologists from the watchdog committee said they stood by their evidence but that the tunnel was not the end-all issue.

"The main point we have tried to make is that there should be continuous archaeological supervision at the site, including open access to journalists, who should be able to report on what is going on there," said committee member Dr. Eilat Mazar.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)