The latest actor to weigh in on the need to check the safety of the Israeli Mughrabi Gate project is UNESCO. Rightly so. The Old City of Jerusalem is a World Heritage site and falls under the auspices of the UN body. The Israelis have welcomed the proposed visit to ascertain whether the ongoing archeological project just outside the gate in the western wall of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount endangers the mosque within the compound. It seems highly unlikely. A greater potential danger was surely present in 1968 when Hebrew University archeology professor Benjamin Mazar began to excavate around the south-western corner of the Temple Mount/Haram. Part of the site was much closer to the mosque than the present dig. In fact, Al-Aqsa Mosque was towering above us when I worked there as a student during the summer of 1970. The Herodian masonry blocks supporting the mosque’s southern wall are massive. It is still not clear how such giant ashlars were moved into place with such precision. But they have been there, solidly in place, for the past 2000 years. Suffice it to say, there was no damage to the mosque from the archeological project, which continued under Mazar for 10 years. But there were significant finds from Muslim, Christian and Jewish perspectives. Today, Mazar’s work is evident in a vast archeological park that contains, among other important discoveries, a giant stairway that led into the temple of Jesus’ time, underground cisterns, a first century Herodian street complete with shops, evidence of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, when stones from the Temple Mount walls were thrown down to the pavement below, and the remains of an Umayyad palace.
In 1970, I was digging alongside Palestinians, Israelis and a large number of international students. East Jerusalem was in Israeli hands after the 1967 war and some of us lived in a hotel owned and operated by the Palestinian notable family, the Husaynis. Their New Orient House Hotel eventually closed and became Orient House, the center for the Palestinian political presence in Jerusalem under the late Faysal al-Husayni. It was possible then to work together to discover artifacts of interest to all sides. What has happened in the years since? More ideological division and despair over threats to identity (see Identity, Ideology and the Future of Jerusalem). Is the Mughrabi project not worthy of the support of all for the benefit of all?
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