Denial of an Authentic Jewish Connection to Jerusalem and Its Holy Places (Book chapter)

The title is the third chapter of the book “Jerusalem and Its Role in Islamic Solidarity” by Yitzhak Reiter published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008. The following is the chapter.

Introduction=

On September 25, 2003, a delegation of Arab leaders from northern Israel visited Yasser Arafat at his Muqataa compound of Ramallah in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians in the al-Aqsa Intifada; the guests were surprised when Arafat lectured to them for about a quarter of an hour on al-Aqsa, making the central claim that the Jewish Temple had not existed in Jerusalem but rather in Yemen.1 Arafat also told those present that he himself had visited Yemen and been shown the site upon which Solomon's Temple had stood. The Jewish (and the Christian) reader will undoubtedly attribute this story to Arafat's detachment from reality. A Palestinian academic and political figure told me that Arafat was impressed by the theory of the historian Kamal Salibi, professor emeritus at the American University of Beirut, who was appointed director of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies in Jordan despite the fact that his book, which claims that the Children of Israel originated from the western Arabian Peninsula, represents his own singular viewpoint, unsupported by any other scholar. Salibi claimed that biblical Jerusalem was located at the Arabian Nimas highlands, halfway from Mecca to Yemen.2 This is an instructive example of how far a book's influence may reach, however esoteric its subject matter may be.

A similar claim to that made by Arafat has been expounded by another Palestinian public figure, Hajj Zaki al-Ghawl-who, from Amman, served as Jerusalem's "shadow" mayor. In a lecture that he delivered in 2002 at the annual al-Quds conference inJordan, al-Ghawl stated that King Solomon ruled over the Arabian Peninsula and that it was there, not in Jerusalem, that he built his Temple.3 Another theory proffered by Arafat with regard to the ancient Temple's location, one that he raised during the Camp David peace talks in 2000 and that was quoted by a senior member of the American negotiation team, was that "the Temple never existed in Jerusalem, but rather in Nablus." Arafat's appointed mufti Ikrima Sabri expressed this view in an interview to an Israeli newspaper already in 1998 by saying: "I heard that your Temple was in Nablus or perhaps Bethlehem."

3.1. Importance of Jerusalem for Muslims

Within the context of the current conflict, the political-religioushistorical controversy overJerusalem demands of the Arab-Muslim side that it contend with a number offactual challenges. The first of these is the long-established sacredness ofJerusalem with the Temple Mount as central to the Jews (and Christians).6 The Jewish holiness of the Temple Mount derives from the biblical narrative. According to the Book of Samuel, David purchased the threshing floor of Arauna the Jebusite, located on an elevation north of the city of David in order to build an altar to worship God (II Samuel 24:18--25). In c. 960 BCE, his son Solomon built the First Temple there in order to house the Ark of the Covenant and offer sacrifices to God (I Kings 6-7). The Bible emphasizes that the Temple is the place chosen by God where his presence dwelt. It became the only place where sacrifices were permitted. Since the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews pray facing the Temple Mount and the ark of the Torah; the holiest section of the synagogue is placed along the wall facing Jerusalem. Part of the daily prayer service and the liturgy for Sabbath and festivals include recitations of the types of offerings and the expressed wish for the rebuilding of the Temple, the restoration of sacrifices and the return of the divine presence to the Holy City. The destruction of the Temple is commemorated by rituals practiced both at home and in the synagogue, as well as annual fast days, the most important of which is the full day of mourning, Tisha B'Av (Ninth of Av), when the book of Lamentations is read. Other customs of remembrance of the loss include reciting Psalm 137 before the Grace after meals on weekdays, leaving the corner of a room unpainted and breaking a glass at the end of a wedding ceremony. Thus, the destruction of the Temple looms large in Jewish consciousness. The question whether the Bible is historic or ahistoric, as some scholars argue, is irrelevant because most Jews and Christians see it as revealing the events of the past.

The second challenge is the fact that Jerusalem, one ofwhose Hebrew names is Zion, lies at the heart of the Zionist idea that also includes within it the religious aspect ofJewish-Zionist national identity.7 The third challenge is the international recognition enjoyed by the Jews and the State of Israel within the Western (Christian) world, due to the historical-religious connection with Jerusalem in particular and with Palestine (Bretz Israel) in general. This recognition represents a major obstacle to the Arabs and Muslims in their struggle for Palestine and for Jerusalem. An example of this is President Bill Clinton's reaction to Palestinian negotiator Saeb Arekat's assertion at the second Camp David summit that the Jerusalem Temple is a Jewish invention: "Not only do all of the world's Jews believe that the Temple is located on the Temple Mount, but most Christians believe it, too." The fourth challenge in the battle for world opinion is the need to refute the claim made by Jewish scholars and statesmen that Jerusalem lies at the center of Jewish experience, while for Muslims Jerusalem was a prayer-direction that the Prophet Muhammad dissuaded his followers from in order to avoid resembling the Jews: Jerusalem was originally instituted as the qibla (direction of prayer) when the Prophet Muhammad was seeking to attract the Jews of al-Madina to his faith, but the honor was revoked after it became clear that the Jews were not going to join his camp.9

In the context of the Israeli-Arab dispute, Israelis tend also to deny the importance ofJerusalem and the al-Aqsa compound for the Muslims and Arabs." Some Israeli scholars emphasize that Jerusalem is not mentioned by name in the Quran or the early hadith literatureBayt-al-Madis is a translation of the Hebrew Beit ha-Mikdash (the Holy House/Temple). The city has been called al-Quds-the Holy City-only since the tenth century; the name al-Aqsa, that which is mentioned in the Qur'an, refers, according to some Muslim interpretations, to a heavenly mosque and not to the one in Jerusalem;11 Jerusalem is only the third city in importance to Islam after Mecca and al-Madina and has never been an Islamic political capital. The Jordanians also failed to make Jerusalem their capital city when they annexed the West Bank after 1948.

They add that the only period when Jerusalem was important to Muslim-Arabs was the relatively short Ummayad rule between 661 to 750 CE, and particularly under Caliph Abd al-Malik who built the Dome of the Rock on the site where Solomon's Temple is believed to have stood and the al-Aqsa Mosque on a Byzantine church toward the end of the seventh century CE.12 .

Israeli writers also tend to ignore the numerous Islamic monuments and artifacts-madrasas, pilgrim hostels, sufi centers, and public kitchens established by the various Muslim rulers throughout their rule in Palestine. They argue that since the Abbasids, who moved the political center from Damascus to Baghdad, Jerusalem has never been a political center for any Muslim dynasty. They also argue that al-Aqsa, which is mentioned in the Qur'an, could not refer to Jerusalem because, during the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime, it was still in Christian Byzantine hands.13 They add in this regard that even some early Muslim sources refer to the al-Aqsa Mosque (the farthest mosque) as opposed to the al-Masjid al-Adna (the closest mosque) near al-Madina in al-Ji 'rana Valley.14 Many Israelis believe that terming the Temple Mount compound "al-Aqsa is a modern Muslim invention. In addition, they claim that whereas Jerusalem is mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible, it is not mentioned by its name even once in the Quran. Even after Saladin's "liberation" of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, the Ayyubid al-Malik al-Kamil ceded Jerusalem in 1229 to the German Emperor Friedrich II-an event used by Israelis and Jews as proof that Jerusalem was not important for Muslims.15 However, it should be stressed that Al-Kamil, acted out of fear of the Mongols invading from the northern border of Syria and a Frankish attack from the sea against his capital in Cairo, and that the treaty he signed with Friedrich II was strongly criticized in his own camp. After Saladin's conquest, Israeli scholars argue that the city lapsed into obscurity and economic backwardness. Although high-ranking governors and rulers donated money and properties in order to establish monuments and Islamic learning institutions in Jerusalem, these were neglected and deteriorated in conjunction with the city's economic decline.16

One example of an Israeli polemical denial of the importance of Jerusalem for Muslims is an article published in January 1997 by Menashe Harel, a Tel-Aviv University professor emeritus in historical geography, who was awarded the Israel Prize in 2002. In this article, Ha rel refutes the Islamic and Christian claims to Jerusalem. Based on academic works of three Israeli historians of Islam and the Middle East, he wrote, among many other claims, that throughout the 1065 (!) years of Muslim rule in Jerusalem the Muslims never developed the city as their capital, adding that most Muslim rulers of Jerusalem from the ninth century on were not Arabs but of Turkish or Berber ethnic origin.' Reading into the academic works of Israeli scholars, Dr. Hasan Silwadi of al-Quds University argued that "Jewish experts in Middle Eastern affairs try to detract from al-Aqsa's sanctity."I A recent example for a denial of the Muslim affinity to Jerusalem by an Israeli official religious figure could be found in an interview given by Israel's Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger to the Jewish News Media Group onJanuary 18, 2008:

Yerushalayim belongs to Am Israel [The People of Israel] and she will be the capital city forever to the Jewish nation...this Wailing Wall is the place that every Jew, all over the world, is praying to this place...But, behind the Kotel, we have the mosque... But when they pray, even [though] they are in the holiest place for us, they pray to face Mecca...and their back is to Jerusalem. So we can see from only one sign that this does not belong to them and they have no connection ... We welcome every Palestinian who wants to come pray in his mosque ... But ... you have another place: Mecca and Medina...you don't need a third place...but give us this small piece, only one, in all over the world, that belongs to us... You don't need three. We have only one.

In sum, Israeli Jews, scholars of lslam, and ordinary people do not deny that the Muslims consider Jerusalem and al-Haram al-Sharif as their third holy city and shrine, but they stress that the city was never a political center for Islam. In addition, they believe that the holy status of the city and the al-Aqsa compound is a late development aimed at strengthening Muslims' argument in the political arena.

In response to these challenges, be they factual or polemic, Islamists seek to refute the claims regarding Jerusalem's centrality to Judaism; they deny the Jewish Temple's existence in Jerusalem and assert that the Western Wall is not an authentic remnant ofthe Temple's external supporting wall, but rather al-Aqsa compound's western wall-the place identified today with al-Buraq, the amazing steed upon which Muhammad was borne to Jerusalem and that the angel Gabriel is said to have tethered to the wall in question. Yet on this issue, Muslim scholars actually contradict themselves: on the one hand, they present claims raised by the Muslim leadership in Palestine before the commission of inquiry set up to investigate the Western Wall incidents of 1929; according to them, Zionism's encyclopedic definitions call for the ingathering ofJewish exiles to Jerusalem and the building of the Third Temple; thus Zionism constitutes a threat to Jerusalem's holy sites. On the other hand, they maintain that the Temple never existed at all and that Judaism can do with substitutes for the Temple and for Jerusalem. Islamic texts that deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and its holy sites are sold in bookstores in nearly every place where Muslim communities exist.19 At the annual Arab book fair in Cairo, I have found many volumes dealing with the Islamic-Jewish conflict, including the controversy over Jerusalem (some of these were used for the present study). These publications may also be found in bookstores serving Islamic communities that I have visited in Europe, America, and Asia. Many of these texts are also accessible to readers of Arabic via the Internet. The theories that they expound are gradually gaining currency and are accepted as received truths by a significant proportion of the world Muslim population.

The new Islamic writing that disputes Jewish assertions regarding Jerusalem raises three basic claims: The first of these is that the Jewish presence in Jerusalem was short-lived and does not justify Jewish sovereignty over the Holy City. In contrast, it is argued that Jerusalem was an important Islamic focal point for Muslim Arab rulers, even if it never served as their capital. Thus, for example, while the Organization of the Islamic Conference's (OIC) Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) admits in one of its publications that Jerusalem, unlike other large Middle Eastern cities, was never a political capital under any Islamic regime, it nevertheless claims that since the Mamluk period the city served as an administrative center." The second claim is that the Temple never existed and that Solomon's Temple, if there ever was such a thing, was at most the king's personal prayer-room; in any case, Solomon is regarded as an early Islamic figure. The third claim is that the Western Wall, the Jewish Kotel, is a Muslim holy site, the Jews' connection to which is inauthentic, having been invented during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for political purposes only.

3.2 Brief Jewish Presence

The basic claim of the new Arab and Muslim historians-those who have been publishing books and articles since 1967-is that the Jews' sovereign existence in Jerusalem existed for only 60 or 70 years, and that this brief presence does not justify a recognition ofJewish territorial rights after an absence of 2,000 years.

Another feature of the debate over the Jews' historical right to Jerusalem is the presentation of demographic data according to which the Jews were a very small minority in Jerusalem during the Islamic period, from the seventh century on. Thus, Ahmad al-Qasim (the Palestinian author of a kind of encyclopedia of questions and answers on Jerusalem) writes that, when Umar I conquered Jerusalem, there was not one Jew in it. In 1170, Binyamin of Tudela wrote that there were 200 Jews in Jerusalem. Al-Qasim maintains that there were no more than 150 Jews in the city by the end of the seventeenth century. Today, the al-Quds University Web site underlines in the chronology of the city that the Jews ruled Jerusalem for only 73 out of 5,000 years.23

The narrative of the Jews' absence from Jerusalem first appeared before 1967. Palestinian historian 'Arif al-'Arif wrote in 1961 that, in contrast to the Muslims, who have many hundreds of holy sites in Jerusalem (which he goes on to enumerate), and to the Christians, who have dozens of holy sites, sacred Jewish Jerusalem is limited to the Wailing Wall and to a handful of old synagogues and tombs of saints. Al-'Arif attributes the numerical deficiency of the Jews' holy places to their absence from the city: "After the Jews were defeated by the Romans they were dispersed around the globe. There is thus no mention of the Jews in connection with Jerusalem for hundreds of years. Only during the nineteenth century did their interest in the city reawaken, due to the hope of obtaining British assistance; they began trying to purchase property in Jerusalem, but the Ottoman Provincial Council's decision of 1837 thwarted these efforts.24 In 1572, there were only 115 Jews in Jerusalem," writes al-Arif. Another example of this line of argument appears in a 1978 book written by Muhammad al-Aamiri, entitled, Jerusalem-Its Arab Origin and Heritage. Al-Aamiri writes that the Davidic and Solomonic monarchies were established after a long period ofJebusite-Arab rule; that David and Solomon ruled for only 70 years, followed by the Kingdom ofJudah, which lasted for another 350 years. According to al-Aamiri, even during the glorious period of Solomon's reign the number ofJews in Jerusalem was small. Afterward the Jews dispersed, with only a negligible minority continuing to live in, or return to, the city. The Arabs, by contrast, resided in Jerusalem before the Jews and continued to live there after the Islamic conquest. They are the Canaanites who remained and merged with the new waves of immigration from the Arabian Peninsula.26 Al-Aamiri stresses the political motive behind his demographic-ecological discussion. According to him, no state representing an ancient kingdom that controlled the territory of Palestine for a few hundred years has ever claimed a historical right to it. "Not the Greeks who controlled it for 300 years, not the Romans who ruled it for 700 years... The Arabs stake no claim to sovereignty over Spain, which they ruled for 800 years." He asserts that the Arabs, in contrast to the Jews, had been living in Jerusalem and its environs for 8,000 [!] years, and he concludes with a familiar anti-Semitic motif: "The Jews' hunger for Palestine in particular, rather than for Uganda, does not stem from the region's rich mineral resources but rather from the fact that Palestine is a strategic center in their plan to rule the world."27 Another article, published by an organization whose goal is to liberate Jerusalem, claims that even during the Jews' brief presence in Jerusalem (during the period of David and Solomon), there was no Jewish hegemony in the city, since the Jews shared Jerusalem with others.

There are authors who add an ideological explanation to the claim regarding the Jews' absence from Jerusalem: the Jews freely chose to emigrate from Palestine since the Temple and Jerusalem are not a crucial element of their faith. Thus, 'Abd al-Tawab Mustafa writes that the Jews, both religious and secular, do not attach any special sanctity to the Temple and that they are always willing to accept a material replacement elsewhere. According to him, the Jews emigrated from Jerusalem and did not seek to return to it even when they had the opportunity to do so; they were satisfied with substitutes in other locations around the world.3

3.3 The "Alleged" Temple

The story of the Jewish Temple and its construction, traditions about the divine worship that took place within it, and even details about the First Temple's destruction by Nebuchadnezzar are well-established motifs in Arab-Muslim literature in all of its forms. The Qur'an (17.7) itself mentions the Temple by calling it masjid, meaning a house of worship. Moreover, classical Arab sources identify the site upon which the al-Aqsa Mosque was built with the place where Solomon's Temple stood. The eleventh-century Jerusalem geographer and historian al-Maqdisi and the fourteenth-century Iranian religious legal sage al-Mustawfi identify the al-Aqsa Mosque with Solomon's Temple. Thirteenth-century poet Jalal al-Din al-Rumi defines the construction of the Solomonic house of worship as the building of the al-Aqsa Mosque. The Rock that lies within the site is usually identified by the Arabs as Solomon's Temple and the heart of the al-Aqsa compound."" Abu Bakr al-Wasiti, who preached at the al-Aqsa Mosque in the early eleventh century, also includes various traditions related to the Temple's Jewish past in his work in praise ofJerusalem. An example from the twentieth century is a guide to al-Haram al-Sharif published in 1929 by the Supreme Muslim Council that maintains the following with reference to the Haram: "Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to the universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings (2 Samuel XXIV, 25). Isaac Hasson, basing himself on Islamic traditions, writes that Caliph Abd al-Malik construction of the Dome of the Rock contrasted with the Christian custom of pillaging the site of the Jewish Temple, and that he did it under the influence of stories about the place's connection to Abraham and to the Binding of Isaac. During Abd al-Malik's time, Jerusalem's name was changed from the Christian Aelia Capitolina (Arabic: Iliya) to Bayt-al-Maqdis (which is a translation of the Hebrew Beit ha-Mikdash, that is, "the House of the Temple"). It has also been pointed out by one of the leaders of the Italian Muslim community, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, that the rock at the al-Haram al-Sharif site is the Even HaShtiya (Foundation Stone) mentioned in Jewish sources, and that ancient Islam recognized the Rock as the Jews' direction of prayer. Solomon's Temple and its historical location at the site identified as the al-Aqsa compound are thus ancient and recognized Islamic motifs; nevertheless, contemporary Islamic literature dealing with Jerusalem chooses to deny and to distort this fact. It is interesting to note an important finding ofNimrod Luz in his research on al-Haram al-Sharif in the Israeli-Arab discourse: not only does the head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, Sheikh Ra'id Salah, deny the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, but high-ranking Muslim members of the Communist Hadash Party-Shawqi Khatib, chairman of the Israeli-Arab Follow-Up Committee, and Knesset member Muhammad Barakehtoo express similar opinions. The reason for this lies in the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which the al-Aqsa compound has turned into a national symbol of identification in the eyes of Arab citizens of Israel, both religious and secular, and even for the Christians among them. What motivates those who deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem? Jewish beliefs regarding the Temple represent one of the most vexing issues with which Muslims writing about Jerusalem has to contend.

Muslim scholars and historians devote great effort to invalidating Jewish belief in the Temple, to denying its existence as a Jewish house of worship or its location in the place identified by the Jews as the Temple Mount site. They maintain that the Temple was never Jewish to begin with, or that it existed for only a short time, and that traditional Judaism sees no need for a temple in Jerusalem since alternate sites around the world are acceptable to it. These efforts are necessary due to the many Islamic traditions describing the place of the Rock as the site of the Temple, as well as the connection between the site and the figures ofDavid and Solomon. Thus, for example, Palestinian-Jordanian historian Kamil al-Asali is concerned by the fact that Muslim travelers who visited al-Haram al-Sharif report the presence of structures and artifacts associated with Jewish figures. He writes that "All of the elements on the Temple Mount which Muslim travelers attribute to David and Solomon, such as Mihrab Da'ud (David's prayer niche),37 Kursi Sulayman (Solomon's Chair),38 and the Dome of the Chain which is said to mark the place where King David sat in judgment-are all folklore, lacking any basis...David and Solomon and all of the figures and patriarchs from Abraham on were raised by Islam to the status of prophets, and thus it is not surprising that structures and sites are associated with them." Al-'Asali adds that "modern archeology has not succeeded in proving that the site on which the Temple stood is located in this place, since no remnants of the Temple have survived.3

Historian 'Arif al-Arif's pre-1967 writings are glaringly solitary in contrast to the later wave of publications denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem. At that time, Al-'Arif wrote that al-Haram al-Sharif is located on the Mount Moriah mentioned in the Book of Genesis, the site ofArauna the Jebusite's threshing-floor, which David purchased in order to build the Temple, and that Solomon built the Temple in 1007 BCE; he added that "[a]mong the remnants of the era of Solomon is the structure that lies under al-Aqsa Mosque."" The place was owned by the Jews for a certain period and was afterward returned to Muslim proprietorship; the Muslims called it al-Haram al-Qudsi because it was sacred to all Muslims.41 Al-'Arif also wrote that the quarry to the right (to the west) of the Damascus Gate is called Solomon's Mine because it was from there that David and Solomon brought stones to be used in building the Temple.42 These statements, written at a time in which Jerusalem's Old City was a part of the Kingdom ofJordan, go almost entirely unmentioned in the Arab history books written since 1967 and, generally, in contemporary Arab discourse.

What is most conspicuous about the way in which Muslims refer to the Jewish Temple (Haykal, or Haykal SulaymanSolomon's Temple) is their frequent addition to the word al-haykal (the Temple) of the term "al-maz'um," whose literal meaning is "alleged," which serves automatically to negate the "claim," that is, the very existence of the Temple, or to express nonrecognition or delegitimization of the Temple. For instance, during the first decade of the State of Israel's existence, the world Arab media added the word "maz'uma" to Israel's name, in order to emphasize Arab nonrecognition of the country and a belief that its existence was fragile and temporary. With regard to the Jewish Temple, in most cases the word "mazum" may be translated in context as "alleged," or even as "the false" since the speaker or writer generally means to refer to a Jewish invention lacking any factual basis. Thus, Abd al-Tawab Mustafa writes in his book, in a subchapter entitled "alHaykal al-Maz'um," that the word "haykal" denotes Solomon's Temple, while the word "maz'um" refers to the Jewish claim that remnants of the Temple lie underneath the al-Aqsa Mosque or within al-Haram alSharif. When expressing his belief that the Jewish claims are completely unsubstantiated, he makes use of three Arabic words: mazim, from the same root as mazum, usually meaning pretentious or false claims, akadhib (fabrications), and iftira'at (lies). In his book, Mustafa seeks to "provide scientific and rational proofs that will invalidate the ideological basis of the Zionist Jewish mazaim,' and he concentrates on denying what he refers to as "the central ideological focus of the Zionist movement, its religious basis: the obligation of gathering all of the Jews together in one temple in Jerusalem." In Mustafa's preface to his book, the following sentence appears: "We came to realize that the Jews' belief in the Temple is no more than a false allegation that does not hold up in the face of scientific criticism, since the Jews' supposed scholarship on the topic is not true scientific research, but rather [a collection of] speculations and hypotheses. He defines the book's primary objective as being that of "refuting the belief in the Temple based on the Jewish sources themselves, out of the hope that such a refutation will cause the Jews' remaining historical, political and settlement claims to fall one after the other like so many dominos."

In seeking to refute the "Jewish lie about the Temple," Mustafa makes several assertions: the first claim is that, based on the size ofthe Temple as described in the Jewish sources, the structure was four times smaller than King Solomon's palace. The author concludes from this that Solomon's Temple was not the Jews' Temple, but rather Solomon's private house of worship that was connected to his palace (another article analyzes the Temple's dimensions according to the Bible and determines that the Temple was "only the size of a spacious apartment). The second claim is that the religion practiced by the Hebrews was actually Canaanite in origin, and that, consequently, a Jewish temple never existed.46 The third claim is based on the first one: since the Temple was a private structure, the author assumes that many other houses of worship existed that were called miqdash; according to Mustafa, after Solomon's kingdom was divided, there must have been many temples. Thus, for example, "Jeroboam, ruler of the Northern Kingdom oflsrael, erected two golden calves-one at Beit El and one at Dan-so that the tribes would turn to them rather than to Jerusalem, which was located in the Kingdom of Judea-and he built a temple for this purpose to compete with the one in Jerusalem." After the Jews divided into separate sects, says Mustafa, the Samaritans sanctified Mount Gerizim as an additional temple to rival the Jerusalem Temple, at around 328 BCE; in Egypt Onias the Priest also built an alternative temple, which according to him is alluded to in Isaiah 19.47 The fourth claim is that the Jewish prophets themselves denied the necessity ofbuilding a temple after the Children of Israel had turned Solomon's Temple into a den of thieves (magharat lussus) and thus had become unworthy ofstructures that were pure. In support ofhis claim, the author quotes from 2 Samuel 7 regarding Nathan the prophet's injunction to David not to build the Temple.48 He likewise quotes from the New Testament" and asserts that the Second Temple's fate was the same as that ofthe First-that it was a den of thieves and a money-changers' stall. The fifth claim is that the Jews have never found any archeological proof of the Temple's existence, despite the excavations that have been carried out since 1967.5 This claim is being repeatedly used today. For example, in March 2007, the PA governor ofthe PalestinianJerusalem District-Adv. Jamil 'Uthman Nasser-stated at a convention in Ramallah that "no historian nor archaeologist, even Israelis, ever succeeded in proving an historical attachment of the Jews to Jerusalem from a religious and political aspects."51 The sixth claim is that the British-appointed Commission of Inquiry to investigate the 1929 Western Wall riots found that Jewish claims that the Western Wall was one of the walls of Solomon's Temple were incorrect [the commission's report actually stated the opposite!]. The seventh claim is that there is no correlation between the site of the Jewish Temple and the Haram, since the Haram was built from north to south, in the direction of Mecca, while the Temple was built from west to east, in the direction of the sun, as was usual for ancient houses of worship. The eighth and final claim is based on a study by archeologist Kathleen Kenyon53 that determined that the city ofJebus was situated east of the walls of al-Haram al-Sharif, in the direction of the Kidron Valley,54 that is, if a Temple had been there it would not have stood upon the current site of the al-Aqsa Mosque.° Mustafa distorts the words of Kenyon, who has never doubted the Temple's location. After noting that the Second Temple was built on the site where the First Temple had stood, she writes:

The site of the Temple is not in doubt ... the retaining walls of the platform of Herod's Temple are still visible today, now crowned by that supreme example of Moslem architecture, the Dome of the Rock.56

Mustafa appears willing to grasp at any scrap of information (even if it is completely baseless) in order to deny the Temple's existence in Jerusalem.

Another author, al-Qasim, writes that the biblical story of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon indicates the existence of a palace rather than a temple. To the question "Is it true that Solomon's Temple lies under al-Aqsa?" al-Qasim replies that this is a lie as excavations have revealed no remnants of such a temple. According to him, all of the Jews' efforts to unearth remains of the Temple have failed, despite the assistance extended to them by experts from various fields, due to the fact that the Temple never existed (li'ana al-haykal lam yakun mawjudan fi al-asl) but was rather an imaginary invention.

In the struggle over Palestine, modern archeology has historically been used as a tool by each side to substantiate its narrative while refuting that of the other in order to promote its political claims." Although this strategy has not been the exclusive province of one party to the conflict, the focus of the present study is nevertheless the Islamic discourse regardingJerusalem. Many Muslim writers use archeology as a basis for denying the historical existence of the Temple on the site of the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa. The following are a few striking examples: in an article written by a Palestinian named Arafat Hijazi, published in 2002 on the Web site of the Islamic Movement in Israel's southern branch, just prior to the Arab summit in Beirut, the author denies the existence of a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount. "Why did they let 500 years go by without building it, from the time of its second destruction by Titus until Abd al-Malik built the al-Aqsa Mosque?" he asks, adding: "42 archeological teams excavated at al-Aqsa between 1891--1925 and hundreds [yes!] have excavated since 1967, but not one archeologist has found a remnant ofthe Temple or any indication of the existence of Jews in Palestine." A similar claim appears elsewhere on the same Web site, in an article by Muhammad Khalaiqa in which he uses Israeli archeological findings in order to confirm that no remnants of the Jewish Temple exist. According to him, since 1967, the Jews have conducted 65 archeological excavations on the Temple Mount (4 of them, he claims, in the tunnels under the Mount), most of them by archeologist Dan Bahat, and he quotes archeologist Eilat Mazar's statement that "[w] e have not reached the Temple and we have no idea where it is."62 In her book, Mazar actually presents findings that support the biblical sources regarding the Temple.63 She states that the reason why there have been no initial findings from the Temple structure itself is that it has not been possible to excavate under the Temple Mount compound-the place where archeologists believe that the Temple stood.64

Abd al-Hamid al-Sa'ih, who is mentioned earlier in this work, wrote in his book that the Egyptian engineer who restored the Dome of the Rock during the 1960s (Husayn al-Shafi 'i) told him that he had dug several meters under the Rock and found no evidence of a more ancient structure."

In another article that appeared on the Web site of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, Egyptian archeologist Abd al-Rahim Rihan Barakat, director of antiquities for the Dahab, Sinai region, writes that "the legend of the alleged Temple is the greatest crime of fabricating history." According to him, David and Solomon had small houses of worship and no connection to a temple, while the Israelites did not in any case adhere to the religion of Solomon, who preached faith in Allah, the One God. He thus asks the rhetorical question "Is it possible that he built them a temple to the God Y----H?"66

Those who assert that Solomon built a private house of worship and nothing more are obliged to contend with Islamic traditions according to which it was Solomon who built the al-Aqsa Mosque (as in the poetry of the aforementioned Jalal al-Din al-Rumi). Muhammad Shurab, a Saudi historian, claims that these traditions are incorrect. Basing himself on a tenth-century Arab historian's claim, he writes that Solomon's Temple was built in the place where the Tower ofDavid stands, that is, outside of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. To be on the safe side, he adds that, even if one assumes for the sake of argument that Solomon built the Temple on the al-Aqsa site, the Jews still have no right to the place since it had been completely destroyed by the time the Muslims arrived there, and since in any case the Temple was built and destroyed several times and there is no proof that the Second Temple was constructed precisely on the same spot where Solomon's Temple stood.67 A Palestinian author by the name of Ibrahim Anani also adopts the theory that Solomon's Temple was located in what he calls "David's ancient citadel," which he identifies with Mount Zion, which according to him was physically unconnected to Holy Jerusalem. Jewish Jerusalem, according to Anani, is Mount Zion and nothing more.68 Another example: afatwa on the Jerusalem Waqf's Web site cites the Jewish version of the Temple's sanctity and determines that David, Solomon, and Herod did not build the Temple but rather renovated a preexisting (originally Muslim) structure dating from the time of Adam.69 Another even more innovative claim appears on the Jerusalem Waqf's Web site in the mufti's response to a question posed by Zayn al-Din al-Alawi: the Temple has already been built three times, the third time by Herod. Thus, according to the mufti, the Third Temple has already been destroyed, and the Jewish traditions regarding the reestablishment of the Third Temple are baseless." A significant number of the Muslim writings seek to elucidate, based on Islamic and Arab sources, what the exact nature of the Temple was, and who built it. Thus, for example, Dr. Abd al-Fatah Abu Aliya, a lecturer in modern history at Saudi Arabia's al-Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University, wrote in 2000 in his book that Solomon built a mosque and not a temple. Abu Aliya bases this assertion on the Arabic term that appears in Qur'an 17:1, 7: masjid, despite the fact that this term originally denoted a "house of worship," rather than a Muslim mosque. Abu Aliya goes on to claim that Solomon and all of the "prophets" who preceded and followed him were Muslims, or at least monotheists who prayed in mosques. This is the place to note that Islam regards the Jewish and Christian figures who appeared before it as Muslims, in the sense that they devoted themselves to one God, in contrast to the Muslims who followed in Muhammad's footsteps and were called mu'minun, believers. Abu Aliya also casts doubt on the location of the Temple that the Jews associate with Solomon: Is it in Jerusalem or next to the city of Nablus?" The author adds that the dimensions of the house ofworship built by Solomon were smaller than those of the al-Aqsa Mosque and that, therefore, they could not have occupied the same site. Basing himself on secondary sources that cite the Talmud and the Mishna,' the author writes that according to the Talmud the "Holy of Holies upon which Solomon built his house of worship is not the Rock from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. The Holy of Holies is a different rock." According to him, the Talmud says that Solomon's structure rose to the height of three fingers' above the ground, while the Rock from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended stood about a meter above the ground. Thus, the structure erected by Solomon was built elsewhere and not at al-Aqsa. Moreover, Solomon's house of worship existed for only a short period of time-that is, during Solomon's reign-as after his death the Jewish kingdom divided into two, each with its own temple: one at Batin (that is, at Beit El) near Jerusalem, and the other at Tel al-Qadi (at Tel Dan). The author also states that the Samaritans, a Jewish sect, claim that the Temple is on Mount Gerizim.

Dr. Nasim Shihda Yasin, who is dean of the School oflslamic Studies of the Islamic University in Gaza affiliated with Hamas, is another example. In July 2006, he delivered a lecture on "the Jewish belief in the Temple and its threat to al-Aqsa Mosque," in which he said that the al-Aqsa Mosque is the axis of the sacredness of the divinely blessed Holy Land, adding that "the Jews, as they usually do, forged the historical facts and broadcast the faked ones via the international media. By so doing they managed to convince the world that the land was given to them as a divine gift and that the al-Aqsa Mosque was built on the ruins of their Temple. They convinced the leaders of the Christian West who assisted them in conquering East Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque in 1967...and the Jews intend to build their Third Temple instead of al-Aqsa." He added that King Solomon (Sulayman b. Da'ud) was not Jewish at all (he was born to a non-Jewish mother) and that al-Aqsa Mosque was built long before his reign. He added that the destruction of al-Aqsa is a renewal on an ongoing old Zionist plan in which the protestant (and "Zionist") Christians join."

There are also exceptions. For example, Palestinian archeologist Dr. Marwan Abu Khallaf of al-Quds University has noted that a Christian pilgrim called Arculf, who spent nine months in Jerusalem around the year 670, wrote that "[o]n the site where the Temple once stood," a mosque had been erected by the Muslims." An official historical document of the OIC states that "[t]he rock is the place where Abraham offered his son for a sacrifice [Ishmael, according to Muslim tradition], and the place from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended, and it is also the site upon which Solomon and Herod built the First and Second Temples."T7 The document also indicates that the al-Aqsa Mosque refers to the site where Solomon's Temple stood in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah, "a place that was sacred to both Jews and Christians (who prevailed over the Jews). The Temple was built by Solomon around the year 1000 B.C.E." It seems that this organization, which seeks to present a conciliatory face to the international community, is unable to participate in the denial campaign, out of fear of criticism by the Christian West.78 The organization contents itself with disputing the Jewish historic right to the site, claiming that the Jews' presence in Jerusalem was brief compared with that of the Arabs, concluding that "their argument should be rejected on a scientific basis.79

The picture painted by the many publications seeking to refute the Jewish beliefin the Temple and its location is one ofmultiple claims and internal contradictions. The most striking motif that can be identified in the statements of Palestinian officials and other parties is that no archeological evidence has been found of the Temple's existence and that the Temple is, therefore, maz'um-until proven otherwise. If a Temple did exist, they assert, it was located elsewhere and not on the site currently occupied by the al-Aqsa compound.

The broad reception that the literature denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount enjoys in the Muslim world and its incorporation into Muslim public awareness are evident also in the use that publicists and politicians make of it. I will mention a few examples of this from recent years: in an interview, Palestinian mufti Sheikh Ikrima Sabri said that there are no artifacts that support the Jews' claim that a temple was located on this site, and that they themselves are not sure where their Temple was, despite the many excavations that have been carried out since 1967. Sabri added, "It cannot be that Allah gave us a house of worship and asked us to preserve it, when it belongs to another group." On many other occasions Sabri has referred to the Temple as "the alleged" Temple of Solomon." In a 1998 interview with him in an Israeli newspaper the following was cited:

Q: In your opinion, is there room for coexistence between Arabs and Jews on the Temple Mount inJerusalem?

Sabri: Moslems have no knowledge or awareness that the Temple Mount has any sanctity for Jews. Why should we allow the Jews to share in places which are holy to us and to Islam for 600[0?] years.

The Moslems ruled the land, since the Caliph Omar, and only now have the Jews remembered to demand a right to the Temple Mount. The Moslems will never permit anyone to enter the Temple Mount. If the Jews really want peace, they must absolutely forget about having any rights over the Temple Mount or Al-Aksa Mosque. The Western Wall also belongs to Moslems, and was given to theJews as a place ofprayer only because the British asked and the Moslems agreed out of the goodness of their hearts. The Western Wall is just afence belonging to a Moslem holy site.82 [emphasis added]

Another example: Dr. Ahmad Khalil, former Jordanian Waqf minister, who served as the head of the royal commission charged with restoring the al-Aqsa Mosque, stated in a January 2003 press conference, against the background of the controversy surrounding the repair of a protrusion in the southern wall, that Israel consistently tries to interfere in al-Aqsa affairs and to excavate underneath the Mosque "in order to establish the alleged Temple.83

In July 2000, after the second Camp David summit, Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet member Nabil Shaath told the al-Ayam newspaper that "Israel claims that its alleged Temple existed there."84

Shlomo Ben-Ami quotes Saeb Arekat-one of the highest-ranking Palestinian negotiators at Camp David and formerly the PA's minister of negotiations-as having said, during the July 2000 negotiations over Jerusalem, that "this whole issue of the Temple...is a Jewish invention lacking any basis. Ben-Ami believes that Arafat came to Camp David with religious commitments that dictated his positions." The last three examples demonstrate how senior political figures responsible for conducting diplomatic negotiations with Israel internalized the messages disseminated by those seeking to deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

Given the many Arab publications rejecting the existence of the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, Arafat's denial ofthe Jewish connection to the site at the July 2000 Camp David talks should not have come as such a surprise to the Jewish and American public, as reported by those involved in the negotiations.87 The argument that the Jews have no authentic connection to Jerusalem and its holy sites had already undergone a process of dissemination and internalization by Islamic and Arab communities and had long been a prominent feature of Arab public discourse. An official publication on Jerusalem issued by the PLO in 1981, one actually written by a Christian scholar (Samir Jiryis), states that there is no foundation for Jerusalem's sacredness to Judaism, and an official PA book on the history of the al-Aqsa site, published in 2002, makes no mention of the site's sacred status in Judaism."

3.4 Islamization of the Western Wall and the Denial of a Jewish Connection to the Site

While the denial of the Temple's existence or its location according to Jewish sources is meant to weaken Jewish historical legitimacy with regard to the site and to strengthen Muslims' historical right to al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount, the denial of authentic Jewish connection to the Western Wall seeks to weaken the Jewish right to an active place of worship-a right that was recognized by the Ottomans and that is also referred to in international documents. From the Muslim point of view, the Western Wall is a part of the al-Aqsa complex, and the Western Wall plaza-the site where the Jews pray-was a part of the Mughrabi Quarter that is an Islamic endowment. These claims were presented by the Arabs in 1930 to the commission of Inquiry appointed by the British to investigate the Western Wall incidents and the Jewish and Muslim claims regarding the Wall. In its report, the commission determined not only that the Western Wall and its adjacent plaza were owned by the Muslims, but also that the Wall is nevertheless a site holy to Jews due to its being a remnant of the Temple's external wall; it was further noted that the Jews had a proprietary right to pray at the site according to arrangements dating from the Ottoman era." This fact was admitted, among others, by Arif al-Arif in 1951, when he wrote that the prevailing opinion was that the Western Wall was a remnant of the external wall of the Temple rebuilt by Herod in 11 BCE and destroyed by Titus in 70 CE.91 Al-'Arif adds, however, that the Western Wall is more sacred to Muslims than to Jews, and that conflicts had, therefore, erupted between Jews and Muslims over the site. The Muslims believe that it was there that the angel Jibril (Gabriel) tethered Muhammad's steed, al-Buraq, on the night of his nocturnal journey to al-Aqsa, and that the site is part of al-Haram al-Sharif? Writing in 1978, Tibawi also recognizes the Jewish tradition that views the Western Wall as a remnant of the wall that surrounded the Temple, although this recognition extends, in his words, only to the Wall's "six lower strata of stone," and he rejects the Jews' right to visit the site on more than an individual basis. A different view has been expressed by one of the leaders of the Italian Muslim community, who wrote that the Western Wall, despite its identification with al-Buraq, was holy to the Jews long before it became associated with the Prophet Muhammad's NightJourney.93 By contrast, there are those who claim that the Western Wall is not an authentic remnant of the Temple Mount site (that is, of the Temple Mount's outer retaining wall), and that the Jews decided to pray there only in order to gain ownership of it.94

The current Islamic debate over the Western Wall has two dimensions. The first of these is the site's Islamization and its identification as a place holy to Muslims, based on three points: the tradition according to which Prophet Muhammad's miraculous steed, al-Buraq, was tethered there; the Western Wall's status as "part of the al-Aqsa Mosque [wall]; and its status as Muslim waqf. The second dimension is the claim that the Jews invented the Western Wall as a Jewish holy site and that they have no authentic historical connection to it. In an article published in 2002, just prior to the Arab summit in Beirut, Arafat Hijazi wrote on the Web site of the Islamic Movement's southern branch: "First of all we must redeem from its state of desecration occupied al-Buraq, whose sanctity has been violated by the Jews...They can wail anywhere, while the Muslims have no other place where the Prophet tethered al-Buraq." Another example: Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, former mufti of the PA, has ruled on numerous occasions that the entire al-Aqsa complex is Islamic waqf and that the Jews have no right to it." Addressing the issue of the displacement of a stone from the top of the Western Wall and reports in the Israeli media regarding the need to deal with the matter, Sabri stated that the Western Wall is part of al-Aqsa and that only the Waqf is permitted to carry out repairs upon it. On another occasion Sabri said that al-Buraq Wall is Muslim waqf, that the place (the plaza) where the Jews pray lies outside of the Wall, and that it is part of the Mughrabi Quarter that is also Islamic waqf.98 In an interview broadcast by the al-Jazeera television channel, Sabri stated that the Western Wall was never even for one second a Jewish structure and that the Jews have no connection to it. "Who decided that the Western Wall is a remnant of the Temple?" Sabri asked, answering with a rhetorical question: "Is it scientifically or archeologically conceivable that Herod, who built the temple to Augustus in Caesarea, also built a temple for the Jews?" According to Sabri, the Jews began to pray at the Western Wall only during the nineteenth century, when they began to develop nationalist aspirations.'

Nasser Farid Wasel, the former mufti of Egypt, has also published a fatwa that rules that the al-Buraq Wall is Islamic waqf and constitutes a part of al-Aqsa's western wall; he prohibited referring to it as the Wailing Wall. This ruling was issued about a month after Palestinian mufti Ikrima Sabri published a similar ruling, in order to bolster Sabri and support his edict."" The next example shows how messages formulated by religious leaders have come to permeate the political discourse. About a month after Wasel's fatwa was issued, the Egyptian waqf minister Mahmud Hamdi Zaqzuq stated that the Jews have no connection to the Western Wall, which according to him "was never a holy site for them." Zaqzuq added that no historical evidence exists to support the Jewish claims regarding the existence of Solomon's "alleged" Temple anywhere in the city."?

Yasser Arafat has also denied any Jewish connection to the Western Wall, as early as 1996.1 1n August 2000, after the collapse of the second Camp David summit at which Arafat had expressed his agreement to the continuation of Jewish worship at the Western Wall, Ikrima Sabri stated that "[p]ermitting free access to the Western Wall does not mean that the Western Wall will belong to them. The Wall is ours. They think that the Wall is sacred to them and want to pray at it, but we are the ones who oversee and maintain it.104

The Arab League's Internet site identifies the Western Wall as "the South Western part from the wall of al-Haram al-Sharif...it is called al-Buraq Wall because it was the place where the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) tied al-Buraq during the Night Journey and Heavenly Ascent...at the present time the Jews are using it as a Temple as they consider it part of the alleged temple [italics added]. This contravenes the facts, the reality and history in an attempt to hold possession of it."105

While accounting the chronology ofJerusalem under the Persians and Romans the text narrates the burning down of the city but there is no indication of the destruction of the Jewish Temple or any mention of the Jews. The chronology also omits the Jordanian rule in Jerusalem (1948--1967).106

The Islamization and de-Judaization of the Western Wall are a recurrent motif in publications and public statements by the heads of the Islamic Movement in Israel. Here are several examples: The head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, Sheikh Ra'id Salah, denied any Jewish connection to the Western Wall in an article published as part of a series entitled ABC on the Road to al-Aqsa the Blessed.!At the "al-Aqsa is in Danger" Festival held in September 2000, Sheikh Salah said the following: "Let us tell the Jewish public frankly: you have no right even to one stone of the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque. You have no right even to one particle of dust of the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque. So let us say frankly: The western wall of al-Aqsa the Blessed is part of al-Aqsa the Blessed... The insistence that al-Aqsa the Blessed be left under Israeli sovereignty is also a declaration of war on the Islamic world."108

There are those whose denial ofthe Jewish connection to the Western Wall takes a quasi-scientific form. For example, Egyptian historian Dr. 'Adel Hasan Ghunaym of Ain Shams University in Cairo has written a book entitled The Buraq Wall or the Wailing Wall?, in which he claims that the western part of the Temple Mount was originally a commercial area and that until the sixteenth century the Jews had prayed by the eastern wall of al-Haram al-Qudsi al-Sharif, on the Mount of Olives and near the gates, until Bedouin attacks forced them to cease, and that it was Ottoman Sultan Sulayman the Magnificent who allocated to them for the first time a defined place of worship next to the Western Wal1."" Ghunaym claims that the Western Wall has been important to the Jews only since the sixteenth century, and he makes use of opinions expressed by various scholars and Jewish figures in order to support his contention. Similarly, in an article published on the Islamic Jihad movement's Web site, the author, Ibrahim Abd al-Karim, asserts, among other things, that the Western Wall's sanctity is a Jewish invention and that there are even rabbis who "admit that the Western Wall is not sacred.HO The author bases his statements on an article by Reform Rabbi Yehoram Mazor, which appeared in the journal ofthe Movement for Progressive Judaism in July 1999. Mazor wrote that the Western Wall is merely "a retaining wall built by Herod when he expanded the Second Temple and the Temple Mount," and that "[i]t has no sanctity at all." He noted that the Jews prayed in different periods in different parts of the area adjacent to the retaining wall, and that the reason that they began praying near the western part of the wall was that the Turkish (Ottoman) authorities allocated this plaza to them for this purpose. Mazor's main argument in the article was that "Reform theology opposes the rebuilding of the Temple" and thus that ReformJews have no ideological-religious need to enter the Temple Mount area and to pray there, much less to pray near the wall that encircles the Temple Mount like a fence.' Abd al-Karim, in using Mazor's article to support his assertions, ignores the fact that Mazor's opinions represent a deviation from the mainstream Reform platform. He also ignores the fact that the same issue of the journal presented Mazor's statements alongside an opposing viewpoint-that of the Center for Jewish Pluralism head, Rabbi Uri Regev, who wrote that the Western Wall is "an inseparable part of pilgrimage to our Land," attaching great religious significance to the centuries-old tradition of the Western Wall as the Jewish nation's Wailing Wall-the most sacred existing site for individual and public prayer and for the expression of solidarity with the Jewish people and with the chain of generations that shaped the Jewish heritage.112

The classic Islamic view does not deny Jewish tradition, history, and heritage in general, or those aspects ofJewish tradition that are connected with Jerusalem in particular. On the contrary, Jewish biblical figures underwent a process of Islamization and incorporation into the "stories of the Prophets" literature (Qisas al-Anbiya') and the "stories of the Children of Israel" literature (/sra'iliyyat). It should be emphasized that in ancient Islam-in the Qur'an, in the hadith, and in other literature-there are many expressions of recognition of the Children of Israel, in the story of the Exodus from Egypt and of their conquest of the Land. There are Muslims (few in number due to the existing political circumstances) who make use oftexts to express recognition of Israel and of the authentic Jewish connection to Jerusalem (for example, Italian Muslim leader Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, quoted above!!).

It is interesting to compare Islam's view of pre-Islamic Judaism to Christianity's perspective of Judaism. Both, Christianity and Islam adopt some principles from Judaism but view Jews as abrogators of the "true conviction." Christians view Christianity as the fulfillment and successor of Judaism. Christianity carried forward (and still does albeit in slightly modified form) much of the doctrine and some of the practices from Judaism. The Church adopted the Old Testament while rejecting much of the laws of Moses given in that text. Once the crucifixion ofJesus occurred, then the Law was superseded by the New Covenant brought about by Christ's spiritual kingdom and his ultimate sacrifice upon the cross. Both, Christianity and Islam adopt Abraham as founding forefather and Jewish biblical figures. Unlike Islam, which adopts all Jewish and Christian "prophets," Christianity gives very little attention to the pre-Christ figures.

Of late, more Christians have been interested in the Jewish beginnings of Christianity. They see Jesus Christ and themselves as the seed of Abraham. Galatians 3:8 presents Abraham as the first Christian (believer of the same Gospel), being preached to by God Himself The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century raised messianic expectations. As part of eschatological process, many Protestants aspire to the return of the Jews to the Holy Land and the rebuilding ofthe (third) Temple. Protestant pre-Millenarians were strongly affected by the results of the Six-Day War ofJune 1967 and many support Israel. Evangelical pre-Millenarian groups provide funding for Jewish extreme radical groups that strive to rebuild the Temple in place of the al-Aqsa Mosque. It should be mentioned here that Michael Dennis Rohan, the Australian who set fire to the al-Aqsa Mosque in August 1969, was driven by these Christian messianic beliefs.

In the modern era, most Muslim writers make a sharp distinction between ancient Jewish historical narrative and contemporary political reality. This distinction is based on two justifications: one theological and the other political. The Islamic justification contends that the Jews originally followed the true monotheistic faith, which was identified as "ancient Islam," but they deviated from this true faith, betrayed their prophets, failed to accept the messages of Jesus and Muhammad and were, therefore, punished. Moreover, according to this view, even if one accepts the divine promise to give the Land to Abraham and his descendents, this promise was conditional on the Children of Israel's unwavering adherence to the original, true faith. Once this deviation occurred, the promise was revoked and transferred to the descendents of Abraham's firstborn son, Ishmael. The political justification contends, in contrast, that most contemporary Jews are not direct descendents of the ancient Hebrew ethnic tribal group and thus have no historical or political right to any form of sovereignty in Jerusalem or in Palestine.

One example is a book published in English, in London, by Jordanian-born Muhammed Abdul Hammed al-Khateeb, approved as a doctoral dissertation in Middle Eastern studies at the University of Manchester, England. The book compares the Jewish and Islamic traditions regarding Jerusalem and, in doing so, gives full legitimacy to the Jewish traditions. The conquest of Jerusalem that is attributed to Caliph Umar I is referred to by the author as the city's re-Islamization, that is, as its restoration to the original Abrahamic faith"a faith that was corrupted by both the Jews and the Christians."+ However, the author makes a distinction between the Jewish historical affinity to Jerusalem and the Jews' sovereign rights over the city. In his opinion, only Muslims have such rights, since they are the ones who preserved the city and the true faith over the generations, and particularly since the Jews did not obey God and, therefore, lost their right to the divinelypromised Land. Moreover, the author claims (basing himself on Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe!') that most contemporary Jews are of Khazar origin and are thus not "Jews" descended from the tribe of Judah and are certainly not descendents of the "Children of Israel" capable of claiming that the divine promise applies to them.116

An additional contention of al-Khateeb's is that despite the similarity between Judaism and Islam and the fact that both are religions of redemption-Islam nevertheless accepts other peoples while the Judaism rejects them:

Judaism was once a form oflslam with a powerful sense and vision of universal justice. However in becoming Judaism and in rejecting both 'Isa [Jesus] who was sent to them by Allah from among themselves speaking in their own language, and the Messenger of Allah the Jews have locked themselves into a concentration camp mentality. It is clear that when the Jews have the upper hand life becomes intolerable for other peoples, since others are not invited or welcomed into Judaism and yet they are not seen as having any real existence outside of it. Islam alone contains a universal vision for mankind regardless of race.117

Another approach, which does not appear in other sources authored by Muslims, is that of Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, currently president of al-Quds University, who wrote that Islam sanctified the Rock as a kind of resurrection of the ancient Jewish temple, as an expression of unity with the Abrahamic mission. He regards Islam as the religion that continues Abraham's mission and not as a new faith.118

The writings of al-Khateeb and Nusseibeh, which recognize Jewish traditions, differ from those of most Muslim academics, clerics, and leaders of our generation, who have chosen a strategy of near-total denial of an historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem and to the Temple Mount site. It appears that the intensifying political struggle for Palestine since 1967 has led the Muslims to seek more radical justifications, due to the traumatic loss of Muslim sovereignty over Jerusalem and over al-Haram al-Sharif. Based on dozens of books, articles, and other publications in the Muslim world that deal with Jerusalem, it appears that over the last generation Muslims have been intensifying their efforts to justify claims that cast doubt upon the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the holy sites. These efforts are reflected in a sharp rise in the number of publications that focus on denying Jewish affinity to the city, and in the number of more general publications that mention the subject. Based on the statements of Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and others, this denial has already been internalized by a large Muslim population.

Moreover, the attempt to challenge and refute the Jewish narrative is currently being expressed at institutional and governmental levels inJordan. One of the heads of the Aal al-Bayt Institute (established by the ruling regime, it necessarily disseminates narratives that conform to the regime's policy), Dr. Nasser al-Din al-Asad has initiated a comprehensive research project on Jerusalem during the pre-Muslim period, with the participation of tens ofJordanian and foreign scholars, whose articles are meant to be published in a three-volume collection. The project director, Dr. Zaydan Kafafi, Dean of Research and Postgraduate Studies at Yarmuk University in northern Jordan, has told the media that two German researchers have already submitted studies, intended for the first volume, that show that the kingdom of David and Solomon never existed.119 It should be noted that these scholars, like many other Muslims who reject various elements of ancient Jewish history, base their contentions on the opinions of a small group of Israeli scholars who cast doubt on the Bible as an authentic historical narrative. For example, Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University believes that the foundation for the biblical stories lies in the prevailing ideologies and theologies of the seventh century BCE, when, in his opinion, the Bible was composed. According to him, the stories of the conquest of the Land, the existence of a broadly united kingdom during the period ofDavid and Solomon, the origins and settlement ofthe Israelites, and the overemphasis ofthe Kingdom ofJudah at the expense of the Northern Kingdom (Israel), all are merely a religious-political manifesto and do not reflect the historical reality.12° Finkelstein represents a minority opinion within the community ofarcheologists and historians of ancient Israel. However, Finkelstein does not claim that the Temple never existed or challenge the authenticity of the Herodian Western Wall.

In conclusion, the Arab-Muslim party to the political dispute over the future ofJerusalem faces the acceptance of the Western Christian world of the biblical narrative, which assists the Jewish party's position in the debate over the right to the land. Moreover, the internal Islamic debate regarding the status ofJerusalem, as seen in the position of the Hanbalis who rejected the status of haram in Jerusalem, weakens the arguments of the Muslim party. The Israeli-Jewish side of the conflict utilizes this last fact by belittling and even denying the importance of Jerusalem in Islam. However, the Jewish narrative does not deny the holiness of the al-Aqsa compound and the Islamic affiliation to Old Jerusalem. It only claims that the city was never politically important to the Muslim Arabs, that it was never a capital city for the Muslims, and that its current political status is a twentieth-century invention.

On the other hand, the post-1967 political dispute over the fate of the Palestinian territories including the eastern Arab part ofJerusalem has driven Arab and Muslim writers, be they historians, journalists, politicians, or academics, to construct a new narrative of Jerusalem (which will be analyzed in the next chapter). The present chapter discussed a phenomenon ofArab-Muslim denial of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and its major sacred place-the Temple Mount and its remnant of its outer western wall. This denial appears in a significant number of publications dealing with the topic in the Muslim World. Their narrative argues that the Jewish presence in Jerusalem in antiquity was short-lived and not continuous as the Jews claim. It denies the very existence of a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and that the Western Wall's holiness was a twentieth-century Jewish forgery. It is my belief that there are Muslim academic experts who do not accept this denial. However, their opinion is rarely published or publicized.

References

References are available on the book link of Google Scholar.