Archaeologist: Inspection needed of Temple Mount stability

By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

Source: Haretz, 16/02/2004

A comprehensive inspection of the stability of the Temple Mount compound and the surrounding walls is urgently required, archaeologist Eilat Mazar said Sunday after visiting the site where an embankment near the Western Wall collapsed Saturday night.

"A major collapse at the site, which would cause a major disaster, is only a matter of time," she warned.
Mazar, who runs a Hebrew University project to publish the findings of archaeological digs on the Mount, is also a member of the Committee for Preventing the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center.
She said state agencies are perpetually engaged in "putting out fires" when it comes to the stability of the Mount and its walls, but have avoided comprehensive inspection, supervision and preservation of the site.
On Saturday night, during a heavy snowfall, a 10-meter-wide section of the embankment's supporting wall collapsed. The embankment, which leads to the Mughrabim Gate - one of the main entrances to the Temple Mount - runs between the prayer area in front of the Western Wall and the archaeological excavations at the foot of the wall, to the south of the prayer area. Pieces of the collapsed embankment slid into the women's section of the prayer area, but nobody was hurt as they were all on the far side of the area, near the demarcation with the men's section. Until the embankment is repaired, the men's section will be divided in two and part of it turned over to the women.
The latest collapse is not the first such event in recent years. A few months ago, the western wall of the Temple Mount's Museum of Islam, which also lies near the Wall, collapsed. For the past two years, Antiquities Authority experts and a delegation from Jordan have been working to fix a growing bulge in the southern wall of the Temple Mount compound, a job that has still not been completed.
Recently, the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs and Holy Places announced that it also intends to fix an older bulge in the compound's eastern wall. This bulge has been there for decades, but recently fears have grown that it is no longer stable.
According to the archaeologists of the Committee for Preventing the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, the underground work done by the Muslim waqf and the Israeli Islamic Movement in the area of Solomon's Stables and the ancient Al-Aqsa over the last few years has altered the land and increased the danger of a collapse. The waqf rejects this, saying it employed authorized engineers to supervise all the work.
On Sunday, the waqf charged that the archaeological excavations Israel is conducting at the foot of the Western Wall caused the collapse of the embankment Saturday night. But the Antiquities Authority said the most likely explanation is that the collapse was brought on by a combination of last Wednesday's earthquake and Saturday's heavy snowfall. Mazar also thinks the earthquake was the main cause of the collapse.