The cemetary isn't too visible but that's what you're looking at below the gate.
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 cemetary isn't too visible but that's what you're looking at below the gate.
