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Israel
slams Palestinian study denying Jewish link to Western Wall
Friday November 26, 2010 08:32:17 AM,
DPA
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Jerusalem:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Thursday a
Palestinian document claiming that Judaism's holiest prayer site
was not Jewish, and called on the Palestinian Authority to
"disavow and condemn" the study.
"The Palestinian Authority Information Ministry's denial of the
link between the Jewish people and the Western Wall is
reprehensible and scandalous," a statement issued by the premier's
office said.
"The Western Wall has been the Jewish people's most sacred place
for almost 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second
Temple. This is not the only instance in which Palestinians are
trying to distort historical facts in order to deny the deep and
historic link between the Jewish people and its homeland," the
statement added.
The Palestinian document, authored by senior Palestinian
Information Ministry official Al-Mutawakei Taha, alleges that the
Western Wall, located in Jerusalem's Old City, is not a surviving
remnant of the Biblical Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in
70 AD, but is instead an integral part of the nearby al-Aqsa
Mosque.
The document also said that until 1917 Jews never prayed at the
wall, familiarly known as the Wailing Wall, because generations of
Jews gathered there to mourn the loss of the temple.
"When the Palestinian Authority denies the link between the Jewish
people and the Western Wall, it calls into serious question its
intentions of reaching a peace agreement, the foundations of which
are coexistence and mutual recognition," the statement from
Netanyahu's office said.
"The government of Israel expects Palestinian Authority leaders to
disavow and condemn the aforesaid document, refrain from
distorting historical facts and encourage the creation of a bridge
to peace that will lead to an historic reconciliation between the
two peoples," the statement concluded.
The Western Wall abuts the flashpoint Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary
compound, which houses the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock Mosques.
Moslems venerate the compound as the site from where the prophet
Mohammed ascended to heaven, Jews regard it as holy because it is
built on the site of their Biblical temple.
Following the division of Jerusalem at the end of the 1948-49
Arab-Israeli war, the Wall and the Compound became part of
Jordanian-administered East Jerusalem.
They came under Israeli control in the 1967 Middle East war.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future
state, while Israel says it is a part of its eternal, undivided
capital.
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