RAMALLAH, West Bank, 10 January 2008 — The Israeli organization Ir Amim (City of Nations) yesterday said that Western Wall Heritage Foundation and the Israel Antiquities Authority have begun excavations to construct an underground passage in Jerusalem’s Old City to link the reconstructed Israeli synagogue “Ohel Yitzhak” in the Muslim Quarter with the Western Wall (Al-Buraq Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque) tunnels in the Jewish Quarter.
Ir Amim, an organization founded in 2004 to promote Israeli-Palestinian co-existence in Jerusalem, wrote to Israeli Attorney General Menahem Mazuz to ask him to order the tunnel construction halted. It also asked him to open a criminal investigation into alleged construction and trespassing offenses.
The organization’s attorney Danny Zeidman argued in the letter that the tunnel project is illegal, as it lacks both the necessary permits and permission from the Palestinians beneath whose homes it is being dug. He also said the project contravenes a ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice earmarking each quarter of the Old City for the ethnic group whose name it bears.
The Antiquities Authority denied that excavations have actually begun. It said that it — in conjunction with the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, a government organization responsible for physically maintaining and renovating the Western Wall area — is currently merely examining the feasibility of linking the two sites. A senior Antiquities Authority official said the project has religious, and not necessarily archaeological, significance.
But Zeidman said the Antiquities Authority has recently begun work to expand the Western Wall tunnels westward, in accordance with instructions from the heritage foundation. The foundation also instructed the authority — which is excavating the site of Ohel Yitzhak, an ancient synagogue in the Muslim Quarter located some 150 meters from the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound — to start clearing space to Ohel Yitzhak’s east. Both the heritage foundation and the authority are aware, said Zeidman, that the excavations are aimed at creating a tunnel to link the two sites.
Zeidman argues that the excavation is illegal both because no zoning plan for the area has been approved and because the Israeli Archaeological Council has not issued a permit for the project. The work is considered a salvage dig, but Zeidman maintains that such a description applies only to excavations that are part of an approved plan for aboveground construction, and that no such plan has been submitted in this case.
Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz said the owner of the Ohel Yitzhak site — American Jewish businessman Irving Moskowitz, who has been active in settling Jews in Muslim areas of East Jerusalem — gave the Western Wall Heritage Foundation the right to manage the synagogue site and the excavations.
He added that a decision on whether the synagogue can be linked to the Western Wall tunnels is expected in two weeks. The goal of the excavation is “to reveal the Jewish people’s past,” said Rabinowitz.
