Eldad Intensifies Temple Mount Struggle
by Sagit Levi
Professor Arieh Eldad, a former lawmaker and current head of the Professors for a Strong Israel organization, sharply criticized the way the State of Israel has been conducting itself since 1967 with respect to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
Eldad’s remarks on Sunday came in the wake of the publication of a secret report by the State Comptroller regarding the enforcement, or lack thereof, of Israeli law at the ancient site. The report was not made public due to concerns that doing so would result in violence.
A New York-based Jewish website, however, got its hands on the report and published it last week. The report reveals disturbing truths about the methods taken by the Waqf Islamic Trust to remove any ties that the Jewish people have to the Temple Mount and how Israeli institutions cooperated with these actions.
Eldad told journalists that the contents of the report, as they were published by the website, indicate to what extent Israel’s government failed when it abandoned the Temple Mount and left it in the hands of the Jordanian Waqf authority.
He further noted that the report shows that the Jerusalem Municipality, the Israel Antiquities Authority and other law enforcement officials do not operate on the Temple Mount. Only the police operates on the Temple Mount, but it avoids confrontation with the Waqf in order to maintain good relations.
Asked whether he can accept the Israeli position that it is better to maintain peace and quiet on the Temple Mount rather than confront the Waqf, Eldad responded that such a consideration could be acceptable had the subject matter not been the Temple Mount, the most important site to the Jewish people.
“You can decide to ignore the Bedouin land theft in the Negev, but the Temple Mount is the most important issue there is,” he said. “It’s not for nothing that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu described the Temple Mount as the rock of our existence, and if he means what he said and it was not just empty chatter, then the site should be treated accordingly and we must not allow the Waqf to destroy the remains of the first and second Temple and build an illegal construction site.”
The Temple Mount is the holiest site to the Jewish people and the location of Jerusalem’s two Holy Temples, the latter of which was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 following a failed Jewish revolt to free the country from foreign rule.
Despite its importance to their culture and national history, Jewish visitors face severe restrictions upon ascending the site, including a blanket ban on praying or on performing any other form of worship, as well as restrictions on the size of Jewish groups which can ascend.
Those who violate the restrictions face arrest and a prolonged ban from the site altogether. Although numerous court rulings have stipulated that Jews must be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount as a basic right to freedom of religion, the police department has repeatedly ignored the rulings, citing unspecified “security concerns” as a pretext to continue enforcing the ban.
Prominent public figures, such as Likud lawmakers Moshe Feiglin and Z’ev Elkin, have been forced to leave the Temple Mount due to fears of violence.
The Waqf, which was left in charge of the Temple Mount after Israel won back Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War, consistently destroys Jewish antiquities in a direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling.
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