• Newspapers, broadcasts and reports from Jerusalem indicated that the Israeli excavations around the holy Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock were continuing and that they threaten to cause cracks and bring down both temples.
• The Jerusalem Post, in its 4,406th edition of August 22, 1981, reported that archaeological teams belonging to the Israeli military occupation authorities were carrying out excavations aimed at discovering the tombs of the kings of Israel.
• The Israeli military occupation radio reported on the morning of Thursday, August 27, 1981, that the two Chief Rabbis in occupied Palestine had visited a tunnel discovered recently under the Wailing Wall– i.e., the Holy Bozak– leading to a sensitive area– i.e., the Sacred Shrine. The next morning, on August 28, the enemy radio announced that the Islamic Organization at Jerusalem had asked the occupation authorities to allow its engineers to explore the site of the tunnel, and to undertake the necessary measures in the light of their discovery. The broadcast further said that the tunnel was no more than an old well and that it had been discovered well over a month earlier.
• The Jerusalem Post reported in its edition of August 28 details of the tunnel excavations carried out a month earlier by a task force belonging to the Israeli Ministry of Religions. The report added that the excavations had begun a century ago, and that a room had been built there for a synagogue. The report further said that the excavations extended for some distance under the Sacred Shrine, and that they were meant to reach the Dome of the Rock.
• The construction engineer of the holy Al Aqsa Mosque, Essam Awaad, released a later report concerning the digging of the tunnel. The report revealed that the excavations started down below the western wall of the sacred shrine in the place known as Matthara, between Sleselah and Kattanin gates, and extended 25 meters east at a depth of 6 meters, reaching a place in front of Kaitbai fountain facing the western part of the Dome of the Rock.
• These excavations, it has been noted, surround the sacred shrine and the Al Aqsa Mosque from the south and the Dome of the Rock from the west. These excavations are an extension of their counterparts and of the incessant encroachment on Islamic cultural buildings adjacent to the western and southern walls of the sacred shrine, as well as the Holy Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
• Regardless of the dispute between the religious communities and the Israeli military governors on the site of the first excavations and their allegations that they are the burial places of the ancient kings of Israel and, regardless of their claim that the tunnel they had discovered in the second place was no more than an old well, the Israeli excavations in the said area constitute a flagrant violation of the sanctity of the holy Islamic sites and persistently threaten to bring them down, thus paving the way for their demolition and the setting up of a shrine for Judaism in their stead and in the courtyards of the sacred shrine thereof.
• These excavations constitute a challenge to the Arab and Islamic worlds, and constitute constant violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions as well as the resolutions of UNESCO, the Security Council and the entire United Nations, and hence deserve attention and action on all levels.
Source: Encyclopedia of Palestine Problem by Issa Nakhleh.
