Sept. 26, 2004
By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra said Sunday that Israel may have to limit the number of Muslim worshipers entering the Temple Mount compound during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan due to ongoing concerns that a damaged section of the 2,000-year-old eastern wall could collapse on the throngs of worshipers.
Wakf (Muslim religious trust) officials insisted that the wall, which is undergoing repair, was stable, and that there was no need to restrict the number of worshipers.
The renewed Israeli concern over the bitterly disputed holy site follows a recent Technion report that the eastern wall of the Temple Mount may cave in on an underground architectural support of the Mount, known as the Solomon's Stables. The underground site, which was converted by the Wakf in the late 1990s into what is now the largest mosque in Israel, can accommodate up to 30,000 worshipers.
"There will be no other choice if the eastern section of the wall is not supported then to limit the number of worshipers on the Temple Mount during Ramadan," Ezra said in an Israel Radio interview.
During a rare visit to Amman last week, Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco reportedly urged Jordanian Wakf officials to limit access to the mosque at Solomon's Stables during Ramadan for safety reasons.
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are expected to throng to the Temple Mount, as they do every year, during this year's Muslim holy month, which begins at the end of October. It is for this reason that Ramadan represents the height of Israeli archeologists' concerns over such a collapse.
According to decades-old regulation, Israel maintains overall security control at the Temple Mount, while the Wakf, or Islamic Trust, is charged with the day-to-day administration of the compound.
Wakf director Adnan Husseini on Sunday dismissed Israeli concerns over the potential collapse of the wall as "Israeli police propaganda," which he said come up every year towards Ramadan.
He added that due to the security situation, most Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza are unable to enter Jerusalem anyway, and that prayer attendance during Ramadan was mostly limited to Jerusalem residents and Israeli Arabs.
The latest cause for concern over the stability of the ancient temple wall comes just four months after the head of the Antiquities Authority, Shuka Dorfman, warned that the eastern wall was in danger of immediate collapse which could cause a "domino effect" and bring down other sections of the ancient compound.
The rare public warning followed a classified report issued by the authority earlier this year stating that the eastern wall was damaged from a February earthquake to such an extent that sections of the wall are likely to cave in on Solomon's Stables.
In the months since then, a team of Jordanian engineers, which has been repairing the bulge on the southern wall of Jerusalem's Temple Mount, has started repair work on hundreds of small holes uncovered in the adjacent eastern wall.
In contrast to the Israeli report, a Jordanian-Egyptian commissioned survey found that while the eastern wall was badly damaged by centuries of rainwater penetration, it was not in danger of collapse, the Jordanian overseer of the team Dr. Raief Najim said.
The Jordanian team is currently filling the holes in the wall with stones, he added."It's not as serious as the Israelis say, but a lot of work needs to be done," said Prof. Saleh Lamei, director- general of Cairo's Center for Conservation and Preservation of Islamic Architectural Heritage, who carried out the survey of the eastern wall this spring at the behest of the Jordanian government.
In contravention of the law, Israeli archeologists from the Antiquities Authority have not been carrying out supervision for the past four years at the site due to their concern about renewed Palestinian violence, despite the reopening of the compound to non-Muslims last year.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1096172271749