Waqf continuing attack on Jewish history

The Muslim authority managing the Temple Mount on Sunday excavated the religious complex in Jerusalem’s Old City and dumped tons of unexamined earth and stones into a municipal dump in violation of a High Court injunction, Maariv reported on Monday.

Israel’s top court in September 2004 prohibited removal of earth from the Temple Mount — Judaism’s holiest site and the third holiest to Muslims — and that should it be necessary, the Antiquities Authority must be notified a month in advance. Despite the ruling, the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf removed great piles of earth from the Temple Mount in recent years and dumped them in the valley east of the Old City walls.

Tzachi Dvira, the manager of the archaeological team responsible for sifting through soil excavated from the Temple Mount for remains, told Maariv that on Sunday mounds of earth containing historic relics were carted off and dumped before being investigated.

Police claimed the removal of the soil was coordinated in advance. Dvira, however, said there were no Antiquities Authority officials on site, and the one police officer monitoring the operation had no conception of its significance. Dvira claimed waqf workers exploited a permit for removing construction waste from renovations done at the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to cart off artifact-laden earth from the Temple Mount.

Noting the fact that official oversight of earth removal from the Temple Mount has grown lax in recent years, he said that “the fact that no one has succeeded in stopping the waqf’s destructive actions raises many doubts about the role of the government in this matter.”

He added that examination of soil that had been removed to the Kidron Valley, situated at the base of the Temple Mount, has yielded “tens of thousands of finds, including signet rings from the First Temple era, painted floor tiles from the Second Temple era, ancient gold coins, and horseshoe nails and arrowheads belonging to the Knights Templar, who stabled their horses in Solomon’s Stables.”