Ein lehrreicher Artikel in Haaretz über die tieferen Gründe für die muslimische Kampagne gegen die Grabungsarbeiten am Tempelberg: Es geht um nichts weniger als den Anspruch auf Jerusalem.
Den Juden soll jedes Recht auf Jerusalem abgesprochen werden. Ihre historische Präsenz dort sei nur kurzfristig gewesen. Der Tempel habe in Wahrheit anderswo gestanden. Jerusalem sei mithin eine rein islamische Heilige Stätte.
Der zweite Tempel in einer Rekonstruktion des 19.Jahrhunderts
Who among us knows, for example, that the al-Aqsa Mosque, which according to contemporary studies was built some 1,400 years ago, is now claimed to have been built at the time of the world’s creation, during the days of Adam or Abraham? And who is aware of the fact that increasing numbers of Muslim academics and religious leaders claim it existed even before Jesus and Moses and that Islam preceded Judaism in Jerusalem?
Today, thousands of Islamic rulings, publications and sources deny the Jewish roots in Jerusalem and its holy places. They claim that the Temple didn’t even exist in Jerusalem but was located in Nablus or Yemen. An Islamic legal pronouncement (fatwa) on the Jerusalem Waqf (Muslim religious trust) Web site says King Solomon and King Herod did not build the Temple at all, but merely refurbished an existing structure that had been there from the days of Adam. Today, many Muslims call the Temple „the greatest fraud crime in history“ and many Muslim adjudicators attach the world „so-called“ to the word „temple.“
On the southern Islamic movement’s Web site, Mohamed Khalaikah cites Israeli archaeologists in support of his theory that there is no trace of the Jews‘ Temple. He distorts the writings of these archaeologists, whose studies provided findings from Biblical sources corroborating the Temple’s existence.
Muslim religious figures attempt to portray the Jewish presence in Jerusalem as having been short-term. The Western Wall is a Muslim site, they argue, and say Jewish affinity for it was invented for political purposes and dates only to the 19th and 20th centuries. Their aim is to disprove the centrality of Jerusalem to Judaism. Above all they stress the „precedence and supremacy of Islam over Judaism, which contaminates the city’s Muslim character.“
Muslim religious leaders, with at least partial academic backing, are today rewriting Jerusalem’s history and introducing new terms and content into Muslim and Palestinian discourse. These terms are total nonsense, even according to known Muslim historians like al Makdessi (who lived in the 11th century). In recent years, this new terminology has penetrated the discourse of Palestinian and Muslim politicians as well. Ehud Barak, Shlomo Ben-Ami and the members of the Israeli delegation were horrified to hear it at the Camp David Summit of 2000 from Yasser Arafat and members of his delegation.
It is therefore easy to understand why the Muslims are so afraid of archaeological digs, not only on the Temple Mount itself but also around it, although these digs also shed light on Jerusalem’s Muslim history. Muslims fear these excavations, not because they physically endanger al-Aqsa’s foundations, but because they undermine the tissue of lies proclaiming that the Jews have no valid historical roots in the city and its holy sites.