– Temple Mount and the Ultimate Nightmare

Building Minaret on Temple Mount 'Dangerous' Move, Expert Says
By Julie Stahl - CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Jerusalem - Building a fifth minaret on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is a dangerous move because it jeopardizes the religious status quo there, an expert in Jerusalem said.

Local press reports this week indicated that Jordanian religious officials, who oversee the Islamic shrines on the Temple Mount, are planning to build a fifth minaret at the site, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif.

The ancient plateau is a hotly contested issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The site of two consecutive Jewish temples, the second of which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, now houses Muslim shrines, including the Al-Aksa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock.

Adnan al-Husseini, member of the Council for the Wakf and Islamic Affairs in Jerusalem, said that construction of the minaret is under consideration.

"It is a question which is under study right now," al-Husseini said. "The [Jordanian] King [Abdullah II] has a hope to build this."

A minaret is a tall, thin tower with balconies from which Muslims are called to prayer several times during the day. There are currently four of them on the Temple Mount.

Dr. Reif Najim, vice president of the Jordanian Construction Committee, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday as saying that a minaret would be built.

But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman Dr. Ra'anan Gissin said he did not know of any formal request from the Jordanians.

"Jordan was responsible for the maintenance of the holy sites on the Temple Mount since 1967," Gissin said. Any change on the Temple Mount would be "considered" and "examined" but it's possible that it's "not the right time" to do so, he said.

"It's a very delicate status quo," Gissin said. The "last thing" anyone wants is to "ignite" another problem on the Temple Mount, he said.

Dangerous move

Dr. Yitzhak Reiter from the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies said allowing the construction of a minaret or anything on the mount is a "dangerous" and "irresponsible" move.

"The idea is a little bit dangerous because any change in the character of the site, digging, building, structural change is a violation of the status quo," Reiter said.

The "status quo" on the Temple Mount was derived over the years through a series of unwritten or unofficial understandings between Israel and Jordan, he said.

Allowing Jordan to build a minaret might encourage extremists - Jewish or Christian or others - to demand that they, too, be allowed to build structures on the Temple Mount, Reiter said.

Jordan continued to administer the site even after it came under Israeli sovereignty as a result of the 1967 Six Day War. But it is in the part of Jerusalem that Palestinians hope to incorporate into the capital of a future Palestinian State. Israel says united Jerusalem is its eternal, indivisible capital.

According to the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement, Israel agreed to respect the "special role" of Jordan at Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem and promised to give "high priority" to Jordan's historic role at the shrines during permanent status negotiations with the Palestinians.

In an act of defiance, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, who agreed not to set up institutions in Jerusalem according to his agreement with Israel, appointed his own mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrama Sabri, and other Palestinian officials over the Islamic religious authority on the Temple Mount, sidelining the Jordanian administration in the mid 1990s.

Nevertheless, a report last month indicated that there were signs that Jordan was once again asserting its authority over the Temple Mount as a result of an Israeli policy of pushing the PA out of the city.

But Reiter said there are other ways for Israel to encourage Jordan with regard to the Temple Mount.

"It's a wrong Israeli interest," Reiter said. "If Israel is interested in making more room to Jordanian administration on the Haram al-Sharif, there are other ways to help Jordan get more power there."

Building a minaret there would be a "new initiative" not necessary according to Islamic tradition, Reiter said. But it does coincide with the idea of upgrading the status of Jerusalem as a holy site more than the third holiest site in Islam.

Supervision Needed

Archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar is concerned about the idea of building on the Mount for other reasons.

Mazar is member of the non-political, Committee for Preventing the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, which sounded the alarm about what it considers the wholesale destruction of antiquities on the Temple Mount.

It is imperative that no construction be performed on the Mount without proper archeological supervision, Mazar said.

Comparing the Temple Mount's archeological significance to that of the Egyptian pyramids, she said that in the past the Wakf has used seemingly reasonable requests to engage in large building projects.

"They're using all kinds of good causes like an emergency exit as an excuse [for] massive construction without archeological [supervision]," she said, in reference to a request several years ago.

The Islamic authorities there used the permission to build an "emergency exit" from an underground area known as Solomon's Stables to carve out what has been described as the largest mosque in the Middle East under one corner of Temple Mount.

Archeologists and others were alarmed by the fact that the operation had no Israeli archeological supervision as required by law and claimed that tons of fill full of artifacts was carelessly discarded and lost forever.

"The destruction is irreversible," Mazar said. "[I would] like to know that there is true archeological supervision taking place."

The Islamic authority on the Mount denied any wrongdoing and said it had its own archeologists working at the site.

According to Mazar, while the Islamic authorities take care of the mosques on the Mount they do not exercise the same care over the site itself.

"We know part of it is about to collapse," Mazar said. "Only the mosques are treated with preservation activity. The whole compound, we know is in a very bad state."
 

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