Ha'aretz: Israeli Arabs take key role in Temple Mont construction activity

The hands that could help Arafat don Saladin's mantle

Hundreds of volunteers come every week to the Temple Mount to take part in the restoration of the mosques and their surroundings. Those helping the Muslim religious trust want to establish facts on the ground.

By Danny Rubenstein Ha'aretz 4 September 2000

A few weeks ago the work of laying the new carpet on the floor of the Al Aqsa Mosque was completed. This job took many months, and entailed the restoration and repair of much of the mosque floor. This is a very splendid, thick carpet in shades of red, along the length and width of which are woven small rectangles with rounded corners that indicate areas for individual prayer. In Islam, prayer is individual, and one can say the five daily prayers in any place. Only on Friday afternoon do people assemble to listen to the weekly sermon, and then in the large hall of Al Aqsa, worshippers take their places in rows according to the white rectangles.The vast sum of money for weaving the new carpet (which was produced in Turkey) and installing it in the mosque came from a donation from the Emirate of Sharjah in the Persian Gulf.

Donations have been flowing in to the waqf (Muslim religious trust). Archeologist Meir Ben-Dov, who is a specialist in Muslim archeology and knows what is happening on the Temple Mount today as well, says that whenever there is political rivalry over a holy place, there are always donations coming in and large investments of money.

In the modern history of the Temple Mount, there have been several such periods. Beginning in the 1920s, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, established large funds from monies donated by Muslims abroad for refurbishing the mosques on the grounds that the Jews were intending to built the Temple on the site. With the money he collected, he strengthened Muslim institutions, especially in Jerusalem, and among other things built the luxurious Palace Hotel (now used by the Ministry of Industry and Trade) on what is today Agron Street in Jerusalem.

A famous example of this competitiveness is connected to the cracks that were discovered about 10 years ago in the ancient and splendid Dome of the Rock. The Saudi dynasty immediately offered a donation of millions of dollars to repair the dome, and Yasser Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, who was in Tunis at the time, welcomed this. However, the Saudi offer ired Jordan's King Hussein, who saw himself as the patron of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. He immediately offered a larger donation. However, as the kingdom's coffers were empty, Hussein sold a grand estate he owned in England and donated the money for re-gilding the dome. The floor at the Dome of the Rock also recently received new carpets at great expense. The traditional donors for renewing the carpets at the Dome of the Rock are the kings of Morocco.

Anyone who has not been to the Temple Mount compound during the past few years will find that much work has been done there, both in and around the mosques. Many ornaments have been added to the large halls, the colored glass windows have been renewed, and the restoration of the large columns of Al Aqsa has been completed. It has all been done with contributions that have come in from all sides.

Last Friday, for example, the preacher at Al Aqsa gave a special blessing to an Israeli Muslim family from Umm al Fahm, which had donated all the gifts that had been received for their son's wedding, a total of NIS 300,000, to the mosques in Jerusalem.

The mayor of Umm al Fahm, Sheikh Riyad Saleh, comes to the Al Aqsa compound nearly every Saturday. He is the head of a popular movement of Israeli Arabs, which rallies about 500 volunteers every week to work on the renovations at the mosques. They bring tools and building materials with them and in this way they have paved the large underground hall of Solomon's stables in the southeast corner of the compound. After the work was completed, the place, which is called the Marwani Prayer Hall, was opened for prayers. South of there, large earth-moving works have been carried out to break through two of the large arches to serve as an entrance to the hall. This is the project that several months ago aroused protests from several Israeli archeologists, who claimed that damage had been done to antiquities. Now Sheikh Riyad and his people are completing the building of the passage and the broad steps at the entrance. The sheikh explains that it is all being done in accordance with precise instructions from the waqf administraiton in Jerusalem.

The Israeli Arab volunteers come from almost all over the country: from the Galilee, from the Triangle and from the Negev. Last Saturday they worked at pulling weeds that had sprung up among the paving stones of the eastern courtyard. Others passed paving stones from hand to hand to the pavers who worked at the new entrance to Solomon's stables. It was clear that they were working devotedly. From time to time, one of them called out Allahu akbar (God is great), and all the workers replied in chorus "Praise God."

In the light of the complex diplomatic negotiations and the various proposals that have come up regarding the Temple Mount, it is not hard to understand the significance of the huge projects the waqf is implementing in Solomon's stables. Until recently, Israelis have been renovating the archeological site on the external side of the southern wall, restoring the area of the ancient steps that lead to the Hulda Gate. If these gates in the wall are broken through, it is possible to go through them into the same undergrouind halls of Solomon's stables. At the waqf adminsitration there were suspicions that this was the Israelis' intentions, especially as in the past there were a number of yeshiva students who had tried to find ways to tunnel into the Temple Mount. Now it turns out that the suspicions of the heads of the waqf were not misplaced; at Camp David, Israeli representatives, under instructions from Prime Minsiter Ehud Barak, spoke about the possibility that Jews would be allotted a special area for prayer beneath the Al Aqsa compound. Such a possibility is mentioned in the American compromise proposal as well, and at the Chief Rabbinate they are also discussing the possibility of building a synagogue on the Temple Mount. Thus, the Jerusalem waqf has pre-empted the possibility that the Jews will break through the ancient entrance via the southern wall by the accelerated construction of an entrance that was broken through the underground arches from the north.

The Temple Mount compound, the Haram al Sharif, the Al Aqsa mosques and the Dome of the Rock, and a number of other buildings on the site are quickly becoming a beautifully nurtured and well-maintained spot. Workers are now repairing another part of the Dome of the Rock, and Italian stone artisans are repairing the outdoor prayer podium between the mosques. According to reports from the waqf, the number of worshippers at the Temple Mount mosques has been rising steadily over the past few years. During the month of Ramadan and on the Muslim holidays last year, there were nearly 300,000 who came to pray on Fridays, far more than in past years.

There are also thousands of visitors to the site daily, most of them foreign tourists who enter through the Mughrabi gate near the Western Wall. There is no entrance fee to the compound, but anyone who wants to visit the mosques must purcahse a ticket for NIS 25. The ticket also grants entrance to the Al Aqsa Museum in the southern corner of the compound, On display at the entrance to the museum are the blood-stained garments of the 18 worshippers who were killed in the bloody events of Sukkot 1990. In the halls of the museum various items from the mosque are exhibited: rare Koran manuscripts, ancient keystones, the cedar of Lebanon beams from the roof of Al Aqsa that were scorched in the fire set by the devout Australian Christian Dennis Rohan in August 1969, as well as the remains of the ancient and ornate preacher's podium (the minbar) built by Saladin, which has become one of the main attractions of Al Aqsa; it too went up in flames in 1969. For many years Egyptian artisans were engaged in restoring the ancient podium carved of walnut wood, and apparently the work has recently been completed. Why have they not re-installed the restored minbar to its original site at the southern extremity of Al Aqsa? The accepted hypothesis is that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, who makes a habit of invoking Saladin, the liberator of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, wants to be the leader who will put the podium back in its permanent place. This, apparently, is slated to be one of the peak moments of the establishment of Arab-Muslim-Palestinian control over the holiest place in Jerusalem.