NEWS STORY: Chief Rabbi: Leave Temple Mount Under Muslim Control

c. 2000 Religion News Service JERUSALEM _ In an unprecedented move, Israeli Chief Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron says Jerusalem’s ancient Temple Mount, where the Muslim holy site of Al Aksa Mosque has stood since the Middle Ages, should effectively remain under the administration of Islamic authorities who now control the site. But the chief rabbi has […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ In an unprecedented move, Israeli Chief Rabbi Eliahu Bakshi-Doron says Jerusalem’s ancient Temple Mount, where the Muslim holy site of Al Aksa Mosque has stood since the Middle Ages, should effectively remain under the administration of Islamic authorities who now control the site.

But the chief rabbi has also called on Jews, Muslims and Christians to “be wary of every change in the status” of the Temple Mount, an indirect criticism of the recent Muslim construction work unilaterally undertaken around Al Aksa by Islamic authorities.


Bakshi-Doron made his statement in the form of an official letter to a conference of Muslim, Christian and Jewish representatives from Jerusalem who gathered in the Italian city of Milan last week to discuss the status of Jerusalem’s holy sites in a final peace settlement. The session was hosted by the Italian Center for Peace in the Middle East, a European Community organization.

The statement was made public in Jerusalem on Tuesday and promises to open a new round of debate on sacred sites in Jerusalem.

“Sites which are precious and holy for Muslims, Christians and Jews, should not be the cause of strife and conflict, nor become weapons in the hands of those who battle the peacemakers,” Bakshi-Doron said in the statement which was delivered by Rabbi David Brodman, chief rabbi of the Israeli town of Savyon.

“We must preserve and respect the current status and sanctity of the holy Temple Mount, which is known to others as the area of the al-Aksa Mosque,” he added. “We must be wary of every change in its status, for it could desecrate the sanctity of the place and lead to the kind of bloodshed that is opposed by every religion and civilized society.”

The letter was signed only by Bakshi-Doron, chief rabbi of Israel’s Oriental, or Sephardic, Jewish community but it also had the tacit approval of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, who leads the European Jewish religious establishment, sources close to rabbinical figures said.

Bakshi-Doron’s statement comes at a time when Jewish-Muslim tensions regarding the fate of the Temple Mount are on the rise, due to the intensive negotiations now under way on a final peace accord, and the controversial new construction around Al Aksa Mosque.

The construction has included the creation of a large underground prayer chamber in an area traditionally known as Solomon’s Stables last year and, more recently, the paving of a plaza on the Temple Mount that would lead down to the prayer chamber.


A number of noted Israeli archaeologists, writers and intellectuals of all political stripes have expressed concern about the likely destruction of archaeological artifacts by bulldozers and earthmoving equipment that have been working for months in the area. Islamic authorities have barred Israel’s Antiquities Authority from supervising the excavations as was the practice in the past. Israeli authorities have avoided entering the sensitive area by force for fear of triggering violence.

Traditionally, religious Jews avoided ascending to the Temple Mount or Al Aksa, because they might accidentally tread on the area of the sacred Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the biblical-era Temple.

After the 1967 Six Day war, when Israel gained political control over the area of the Temple Mount for the first time in 2,000 years, the chief rabbis supported an arrangement whereby Muslim authorities continued to control the Temple Mount area around Al Aksa Mosque. Meanwhile, Jewish authorities gained control of the Western Wall, the revered site of traditional Jewish prayer below Al Aksa.

During the 1980s and the 1990s, this status quo was gradually undermined by nationalist Jewish religious figures who broke with tradition and began periodic attempts to pray in the Temple Mount area. The chief rabbis at the time tolerated or indirectly supported the effort.

“The truth is that Bakshi-Doron’s statement is a reiteration of the position of the chief rabbinate after 1967, that was compromised in the course of recent years,” said Rabbi David Rosen, of the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League, who attended the meeting in Milan.

The new political “moderation” being expressed by today’s chief rabbis has won the praise of Ron Pundak, one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace agreement.


“The very moderate messages that came forth from the Israeli side at the conference were influenced in large part by the moderate positions that Chief Rabbi Bakshi-Doron has adopted,” said Pundak, who helped organize the event in Milan.

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Pundak said that he is working to promote the creation of a joint Muslim, Christian and Jewish commission to oversee Jerusalem’s holy sites following a final peace agreement, to insure free Jewish, Christian and Muslim access. Such a commission would also oversee future repairs, excavations and construction activities that might be undertaken at the sensitive sites.

“What is happening today is part of an ongoing conflict in which each side is trying to bend the other side,” Pundak said. “What we want to achieve is a comprehensive agreement on the holy areas of Jerusalem from which all sides will gain more than they will lose.”

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But so far, senior Islamic religious figures in Jerusalem have been reluctant to support any such joint arrangements, Pundak conceded. Jerusalem’s chief mufti, Sheikh Ekrima al-Sabri, has steadily maintained that all of Jerusalem’s Muslim, Christian and Jewish holy sites should be administered by Arab and Islamic authorities, as they were prior to 1967.

But secular Palestinian figures, who were also present at the meeting in Milan, have expressed greater flexibility, Pundak said.

“They were practical enough to see that we have to look for a joint regime in order to guarantee the interests of the three religions,” he observed. “What was raised was the idea of a joint religious council, which will try in a parenthetic way to maintain and govern the sites in the spirit of the three religions.”


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