The cemetary isn't too visible but that's what you're looking at below the gate.
Posted on 12/16/2002 11:37:40 PM PST by JohnHuang2
While the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, is collapsing, Israel is waiting for Jordanian engineers to repair it.
A group of Jordanian engineers is due to arrive in Jerusalem next week to repair a large bulge in the 37-acre Temple Mount's southern wall, the Jerusalem Post reports today. The Temple Mount is the foundation of the Jewish Temple that was destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Romans.
Because it is the only remnant of the foundation, it is considered the holiest site for observant Jews – perhaps the only true holy site. Muslims claim it is the third holiest in their faith because two mosques were constructed on the site hundreds of years later.
What was a minor bulge two years ago on the south wall has widened to more than 100 feet and protrudes more than 3 feet. Meanwhile, a new bulge developed on the west wall to the right of the Wailing Wall. Dark moisture stains suggest that water seeping from a garden above is creating pressure on the wall, according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority.
The team of four engineers is currently choosing the proper material to fill the voids and cracks in the wall and will start its work "within a week," said Dr. Raef Najim, vice president of the state-run Jordanian Construction Committee, according to the Post.
Despite the fact the Temple Mount is the only real estate in the world revered by Jews, Israel has turned over day-to-day administration of the area to the Waqf, an Islamic trust with close ties to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
A year-long dispute between Israel and the Waqf over who will fix the bulge was solved in October with a decision to involve the Jordanian engineers, who inspected and took a sampling of the protruding wall, says the Post.
A report the engineers subsequently issued recommended replacing some of the eroding stones in the 2,000-year-old wall to prevent it from future collapse.
The majority of the work to be done by the engineers -- who have consulted with various European firms to determine the best new binding materials and chemical additives -- will not take more than 10 days. The decision to let the Jordanians do to the work, which was made at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, follows repeated warnings by top Israeli archeologists that sections of the southern wall are in danger of collapse.
The Jordanian report found there is no immediate danger of collapse. The report cites water dripping into the wall over years as a possible cause of the bulge, Najim said in October. He noted that the penetration of rainwater into the interior of the wall and the changes of temperature created certain voids in the wall, according to the Post.
Israeli archeologists believe the bulge is due to unauthorized Waqf construction at an underground area known as Solomon's Stables, located on the other side of the wall. Reports say Muslim authorities are constructing yet another mosque at the Jewish holy site.
Faulty drainage was cited by the Antiquities Authority as the probable cause for the bulge in its report, issued last year.
Prior to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, Jordan was in charge of maintenance at the Temple Mount. In the years since, the PA, seeking to gain a foothold in Jerusalem, ousted both the Jordanian-appointed Waqf director and the Jerusalem mufti -- both of whom had for years quietly cooperated with Israel -- and replaced them with its own people.
The government has said it is in the country's best interest to involve the Jordanians in the work.
Fearing renewed Palestinian violence, police have barred non-Muslims from entering the Temple Mount since Sharon's controversial visit in September 2000, leaving the area without any archeological supervision. The 26 months since then is the longest period Judaism's holiest site has been closed to Jews and Christians since the unification of Jerusalem in 1967.
Newsweek has called the southern wall "The Armageddon wall," because the old rocks help support an enormous stone platform that holds the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, among Islam's most sacred shrines.
Should it collapse, some archeologists fear a doomsday effect – dead worshippers, perhaps in the thousands, riots throughout the Middle East and charges that Israel is responsible.
Question for someone out there: have the Muslims actually walled up one of the gates and planted corpses on the pathways on the Temple Mount? I recall it had something to do with preventing the Messiah from entering the area, or the fact that Jews will not trod upon gravesites--thus by placing graves there they were trying to keep them out.
Yes, the Moslems ... centuries ago ... blocked up one or two of the old entrances (out of several still open) and started a cemetery on the Temple Mount. As the absolute rulers of Jerusalem from the end of the Crusades to the First World War, they could do this and not have to explain themselves. One of the explanations offered, but not the only one, is that the Moslems dabbled in Jewish folklore enough to suppose that they could prevent the Jewish Messiah from coming onto the Temple Mount to rebuild the Jewish Temple. To believe this explanation, you'd have to believe that the Moslems took Jewish folklore very seriously, which seems unlikely. I refer to this belief as Jewish folklore because it definitely is NOT unanimously (or even widely, nowadays) accepted and those who hope for a Messiah do not believe that he will be frustrated by Moslem desecrations.
Well... the fellow Christians think is the Messiah did not let a little thing like a GRAVE stop HIM!!!
Somehow, I don't believe these obstacles will present a real problem for Jesus.
The Temple Mount may be the most holiest Jewish site but what is bulging is the wall of the mosque that is desecrating the site. I have thoughts of an angel poking the wall with his finger until it falls down. They may try to repair it but it will come down one day and soon.
This is echoed in a number of other passages in Daniel and elsewhere.
Isaiah 30 refers both to this bulge in a "wall on high"=har homa" and also to the falling of the Two Towers, surely a text for our time. "Har Homa" is actually also the name of the embattled Jewish neighborhood nearby.
The return of the Temple Mount from occupation by the mosques, and Muslim control, will inaugurate a whole New Era in which our God can and will once again intervene and act freely and visibly on the historical stage.
The cemetary isn't too visible but that's what you're looking at below the gate.
What I type are my biases, so I take responsibility for them.
The Muslims seem to be like petulant children: "You can't play here--it's MINE!!! Building the Dome of the Rock exactly where the Temple stood is a prime example. Walling up the gate and planting dead bodies around it--another.
I believe the dead will be raised anyway--and Jesus already conquered death...so it seems to me the Muhammadites are spitting in the wind.
But (again--my personal bias) recent events seem to indicate that there are many people (including our media) who act like tools of the Evil One to do his bidding regarding Israel and that corner of the world.
If the Muslims really, really believe they are acting on behalf of God, I believe they will have a rude awakening when confronted face to face with Him someday.
I noticed as I posted them that the effects were quite different. Can you add any more enlightenment on the other 3 for me?
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