- JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli
experts warned that a bulge in the wall supporting a disputed Jerusalem
site holy to both Jews and Muslims could collapse at any moment and ignite
tensions across the region, a charge Palestinians dismissed as a bid to
extend Israeli control of the site.
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- The hotly contested shrine was setting passions ablaze
again, two days after members of the Israeli Committee to Prevent the Destruction
of Antiquities on the Temple Mount sent an urgent warning to Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon over a 35-foot (11 metre) wide swelling in the wall.
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- "In the current context of the intifada, this appears
to have a very political implication," said Doctor Khaled Nashef,
the director of the Palestinian Institute of Archaeology at Bir Zeit University
near Ramallah.
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- The bulge is located on the southern side of the wall
which buttresses the Al-Asa mosque compound, the third holiest site in
Islam and a traditional political flash point where the Palestinian intifada
erupted two years ago following a controversial visit by then opposition
leader Sharon.
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- The mosque compound is built atop the remains of the
Jewish temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and which remains the holiest
site in Judaism.
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- Eilat Mazar, who heads the committee, said she warned
the government nine months ago that the Palestinians were carrying out
illegal excavations, creating a vacuum in important supporting soil and
causing the bulge in the exterior wall of an area known as Solomon's Stables.
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- Members of the committee accuse the Palestinians of attempting
to wipe out any Jewish traces on the site and call for joint supervision
of the works, an option the Palestinians have categorically rejected.
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- "On the archaeological level, it is a huge disaster.
Not only Jewish, but Islamic and Christian artefacts are being destroyed.
It is everybody's heritage and what is going on is criminal," said
Mazar, whose father Binyamin was one of the first archaeologists to search
the site after Israel seized it in the 1967 war.
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- "But the most urgent concern is that tens of thousands
of people are going to visit the mosque for Ramadan later this year and
their lives will be at risk," she told AFP.
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- Adnan Husseini, who heads the Waqf -- or Islamic trust
running the site -- dismissed the charges as a political move and turned
the accusation against the Israelis, blaming their own excavations of a
tunnel which runs along the nearby Western, or Wailing Wall.
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- "The issue of the bulge is not new. We have been
monitoring it for a long time. We had a timetable to finish the restoration
before Ramadan but the Israelis prevented us from continuing," he
told AFP.
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- But according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, the
bulge has now sagged to a depth of 1.5 metres from 70 centimeters a year
ago, and Mazar refuses to make it a political issue.
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- "Everything is political in Jerusalem. But does
this mean nothing should be done?" she exclaimed. "Closing down
the mosque is now a necessity. Who is going to take resoponsibility for
the hundreds of people who will get killed if the wall collapses?"
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- A mysterious 12-inch stain on the nearby Wailing Wall
-- Judaism's holy of holys -- stirred great excitement in July before experts
found out it was caused by resin squeezed from the broken root of a shrub
growing between the stones.
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- Some Jewish groups say it as a sign that the Messiah
was about to return.
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- The bulge, hidden by scaffoldings which have not been
used in months, has become the new tourist attraction in Jerusalem. But
this time, Israeli newspapers were splashed with alarming scenarios of
regional chaos.
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- "It looks like a scenario that could ignite the
entire region: part of the Temple Mount collapses, hundreds of worshippers
are killed, thousands more stream to the holy place in fury," the
Maariv newspaper said Wednesday.
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- The new dispute comes amid renewed tensions between Israel's
Jewish and Muslim communities and four days after the Israeli Islamic Movement,
which cooperated with the Waqf for the excavations, drew 40,000 people
to the compound for its annual convention.
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- When the intifada erupted, access the site was banned
to non-Muslims.
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- In an editorial entitled "How We Lost the Mount",
the top-selling daily explained: "The government's hands are tied.
It will not allow, in these days of record tensions, the entry of Jews
to the Temple Mount... but closing the gate to Jews signals the loss of
any chance to exercise Israeli sovereignty over the Mount."
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- http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,275742,00.html
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