A step toward peace on the Temple Mount BY SHALOM FREEDMAN
When Moshe Dayan, in the wake of Israel's stunning victory in 1967, decided to give control of religious worship to the Muslim Wafq, his thought was that this would prevent future conflict over the holy site.
Despite the strong objection of then IDF chief rabbi Shlomo Goren, Dayan believed that the Jews should content themselves with praying at the Western Wall, which is where they had prayed during the time of the British Mandate.
Dayan, a secular Jew with little understanding of Jewish religious life and practice, brushed aside Rabbi Goren's claim that the heart of Jewish aspiration for two thousand years of exile had been the Holy of Holies, on the Temple Mount.
When Rabbi Goren subsequently tried to establish a prayer service at the edges of the Temple Mount (in those areas which he had determined Jews can pray without any fear of violating the Halachic prohibition), Dayan put a stop to his efforts. And in the 35 years since, when Jews have "had control" over the Temple Mount, no Jewish prayer service has been allowed there. In fact, it is even forbidden for a Jew to go up alone, take out a prayer book, and and pray silently to God there. Thus, as Rabbi Goren pointed out even in 1967, the shameful situation had been created in which Jews were absolutely forbidden to pray in the single place holiest to them.
Subsequent years have not brought the peaceful and harmonious relations which Dayan had hoped for. There have been many violent confrontations on the Temple Mount, the worst being on Oct. 8, 1990 when 17 people lost their lives in the rioting there.
The Waqf has increasingly engaged in its own independent policy, and has done what it could not only to strengthen the Muslim hold on the whole area (by among other actions building two new mosques there), but also to erase all traces of Jewish presence there.
It has engaged in unsupervised construction work which has damaged valuable archaeological sites.
It has shown no willingness to recognize any Jewish claim to the Mount. In fact, religious teachers and scholars in the Wafq and throughout the Islamic world have taken pains to deny that there ever was a Jewish presence on the Mount.
By giving in and being wholly generous to Muslim religious claims, Dayan helped ensure that there would be no recognition whatsoever of Jewish connection to the Mount.
THE SITUATION on the Temple Mount bears close resemblance to that of Jews and Arabs particularly Palestinians in relation to the conflict between them in general. The whole educational system of the Palestinians and the Arab world teaches that the Jews have no rights and no history in the land, teaches that they are merely usurpers, Crusaders of a new kind, whose very presence in the land is historical anomaly, an evil which is not to be tolerated.
It is not surprising, then, that peace has not come even when there have been concessions on the part of Israel. Peace cannot come, no matter how much one side gives, if the other side is not ready for it. The Palestinians rejected the offer of a state with Jerusalem as its capital, as it would have involved their having to come to accept a permanent Jewish presence in the land.
Perhaps Israel would have been wiser had it in 1967 followed the path recommended by Goren and built a synagogue on those areas at the edge of the Mount where Jews are permitted to be present. The mosques would have remained the center of Muslim worship, but the Jews, whose Messianic aspiration is for the building of the Temple (Perhaps in the very spot where the Dome of the Rock stands), would have contented themselves with a lesser place. There would have been a "sharing" of the holy site.
This would not have satisfied the maximalist claims of either side. It might, however, have made the Muslims more conscious, not of the imaginary, but of the real claims of the other side. It might have helped them come more realistically to terms with the Jews as constituting an essential part of the Holy Land reality. It might not have brought a final and lasting and complete solution, but it would most likely have been a step in the direction of real peace.
Given the problematic situation of Temple Mount worship today it would seem that a new arrangement and agreement must be made between both sides. The state of Israel has no religious mandate to "give" sovereignty to another religion and people over the Temple Mount. But it could recognize the de facto reality of Muslim control over the mosque area, and could oblige itself not to undermine this situation. In turn, it could insist on the right to have its own place of worship on the Temple Mount. It could also insist on what it should have, but has not, insisted on from the beginning: freedom of worship a right for all faiths to pray on the Temple Mount.
This would not be the end of days, or the restoration of the Temple, or the flowing of all the peoples of the world to the Mountain of the Lord in Zion. It would not be the complete realization of Jewish religious aspiration.
It might, however, be a step toward peace and reconciliation between Jews and Muslims, which could then be carried over into other areas and lead to a kind of compromise one which, ideally, would lead to a better and more peaceful world for all.
The writer is currently doing research for a biography on the late former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren.
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