Strata

Temple Mount in Congress

Bill Seeks to Halt Construction

Congress is considering a bill that would cut American aid to the Palestinian Authority until it stops construction on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount—construction that critics charge has been destroying remains from the First and Second Temple periods.

The Temple Mount Preservation Act was introduced in July by Republican Eric Cantor, who represents the seventh district of Virginia. His bill would halt $200 million in aid to the Palestinians this year.

Construction atop the Temple Mount—the platform that once held the First and Second Temples and which today holds the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock—was begun in late 1999 by the Waqf, the Muslim religious council responsible for the mount, ostensibly to enlarge an emergency exit for an underground mosque in the southeast corner of the mount. Since then many truckloads of earth filled with ancient artifacts have been hauled off the mount and much of the southeast corner has been paved over. None of the work has been supervised by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), as required by Israeli law.

At a Capitol Hill press conference at which he introduced his bill, Cantor charged that Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, had barred Jews and Christians from the Temple Mount and was bent on erasing Jewish or Christian connections to the mount.