Archaeologists responsible for the antiquities portfolio of the Arab nations are taking steps in defence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Nevine El-Aref reports on their third emergency meeting held in Cairo Israeli excavations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem's most volatile holy site, have sparked Arabs and Muslims to take legal action to preserve Islam's third holiest shrine. Egypt this week witnessed two provocative removes. In parallel with the Arab Foreign Ministers Meeting at the Arab League, Arab Antiquities Officials (AAO), along with representatives of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (ISESCO), the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (ALECSO), the International Cultural Council for Research and Museums (ICCROM), and the head of the Arab Archaeologists' Union met on Sunday at the premises of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) hoping to find a solution. Although Palestinian antiquities experts were unexpectedly prevented from attending because of exit restrictions imposed by the Israelis, the meeting was attended by Munzir Al-Digani, the Palestinian ambassador in Egypt. At the opening session Al-Digani said that after seizing East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel had realised that stating its patrimony would only be possible through the ratification of its identity and sovereignty. This had led to a series of destructive moves. Four days after the June 1967 War began, the Israelis demolished the Moroccan zone (Hay Al-Magharba) in East Jerusalem, with its two 15th-century mosques and 135 houses, to clear an area in front of the Western Wall. They closed the Moors' Gate and converted the Boraq Wall into the Wailing Wall. They looted the Palestinian National Museum and turned the building into the Israeli Antiquities Bureau. Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa remained their main target, however. In 1969, the Salaheddin menbar at the mosque's eastern gate burnt down, while in 1984 there was an attempt to blow up the mosque. Recently, Al-Digani continued, Israeli archaeologists began to excavate near the Al Aqsa Mosque under heavy police guard. They claimed that the plan was to replace a damaged wooden bridge leading to the mosque with a stone ramp. This triggered protests from Palestine and her Arab neighbours. In Cairo last week, following several closed and open sessions, SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass and the 12 AAO members strongly denounced the Israeli aggression against Al-Aqsa and demanded a halt to excavations underneath the mosque, which they said aimed at altering the Islamic and Arab identity of the city. In a communiqué issued at the end of its deliberations, the AAO recommended following Hawass's vigorous appeal to boycott working with any foreign archaeological mission, scientific institute or museum which helped Israel, directly or indirectly, with its excavations in Jerusalem, and to prevent them from restoring or excavating any archaeological site in the Arab world. Qualifying Israel's provocative excavations as "criminal and destructive acts" against Al-Aqsa Mosque and its entire compound, the AAO concluded that such acts essentially aimed to undermine the Arab identity of Jerusalem. They called on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to take necessary action to force Israel, as an occupying power, to honour its obligations under international law, which prevent occupying powers from changing the identity or topographical nature of any territories they occupy. They also called on UNESCO's Director- General Koïchiro Matsuura to release the report submitted by the organisation's inspection mission which was recently sent to Jerusalem to assess excavation work being carried out at Bab Al-Magharba, at the western side of Al-Aqsa Mosque. They also asked Matsuura to determine how UNESCO planned to resolve the problem, urging Israel immediately to halt its aggression against Al-Aqsa, the Dome of the Rock and Jerusalem's Old City. "UNESCO must also declare its approach to Israel's plan to construct a Jewish museum, to be called 'the Mercy Museum', on top of the Islamic necropolis of Ma'aman Allah," AAO meeting Coordinator Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud said. The AAO called for a Palestinian-Jordanian archaeological mission to be assigned to inspect the area where excavations were taking place. Abdel-Maqsoud added that the whole area around Al-Aqsa was under the supervision of the Islamic Waqf, and not Israel. The AAO also appealed to Matsuura to put into effect the decision issued by the World Heritage Committee (WHC) at its 30th session held in Lithuania in July 2006, at which it urged Israel to present to the World Heritage Centre all information in relation to any new construction planned on the area on the western side of Al-Aqsa, as well as that concerning the corridors leading to the mosque. "This decision has never been implemented by Israel even though it is one of the 21 members of the WHC, a matter that may have given Israel a raw deal under the WHC agreements and treaties," Abdel-Maqsoud said. According to the communiqué, the AAO has called on the Arab countries' permanent representatives at UNESCO to combine their efforts during the WHC's upcoming meeting planned this year in New Zealand in an attempt to defend and highlight Jerusalem's legal position as an occupied territory. They have asked that it push ahead with plans to secure the support and involvement of all the international bodies concerned to prevent Israel from violating its legal obligation in relation to preserving historic sites under Israeli occupation. According to the related UN resolutions and international conventions, Israel, as an occupying power, should coordinate any reconstruction or repair work that it undertakes in the Al-Aqsa Mosque with Jordan, in the latter's capacity as the custodian of Muslim sites in occupied Jerusalem. In parallel efforts, Hawass and several AAO, ALESCO and ISESCO members have communicated urgent messages to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Matsuura and other international officials concerned, seeking their intervention to prevent the Israeli government from acting in ways that make confrontation between Palestinians under occupation and Israeli forces all but inevitable. "Such Israeli violations have provoked wide anger and condemnation in Palestine and many Arab and Muslim countries. This is another attempt to disfigure the historical plaza, which in its turn will not only damage Al-Aqsa Mosque, the most volatile and holiest [Muslim] site in Jerusalem, but will also create further tension in the entire region." Hawass wrote to both Ki-Moon and Matsurra. He also demanded their immediate intervention before further escalation of the situation. Hawass also called on the international community to keep an eye on what Israel was doing to Christian monuments in Jerusalem. The UN secretary-general, in response to the urgent letter sent to him by the director-general of ISESCO, said the Old City of Jerusalem was a place of deep significance for the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths. "It is our firm belief that the status of the Old City and the religious sites within it are extremely sensitive final status issues that can only be resolved through negotiation," he said. Ki-Moon called upon the parties to apply Security Council resolutions 242 and 428 and refrain from establishing or asserting situations on the ground. The UN secretary-general mentioned in his letter, which was signed on his behalf by Ibrahim Gambari, the undersecretary-general for political affairs, that the universal value of the Old City of Jerusalem and the necessity to eschew actions that could lead to tension were reaffirmed in the statement issued by the director-general of UNESCO, which the secretary-general fully supported. The leader of the Palestinian Islamic Movement, Sheikh Raed Salah, accused UNESCO of dropping some of the facts about Al-Aqsa from its new report. Salah said UNESCO had turned a blind eye to the Israeli regime's destruction of the mosque and the excavations being conducted at the holy site. His comments came after a group of UNESCO experts visited Al-Aqsa. Salah said the authorities in charge of the mosque had asked the UN to stop Israeli damage to the building's foundations. He said the UN cultural agency had failed to live up to its responsibilities. The Palestinian official accused UNESCO of siding with the Israeli regime. The secretary-general of the 57-member Islamic Conference Organisation (ICO), Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, yesterday expressed his anguish and dismay at the world's silence on Israel's blatant moves to "Judaise" Jerusalem and change the holy city's historic character. The ICO was formally established in September 1969 after the burning of Al-Aqsa Mosque. "When the Buddhist statues were being demolished in Bamiyan, the whole world rose up against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan," Ihsanoglu said in an exclusive interview with Arab News yesterday. "UNESCO was very active then, but not a word is being said against what Israel is doing to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Nobody utters a word against the Israeli aggression. Nobody is really taking any action. There is silence all over." Ali Radwan, head of the General Arab Union for Archaeologists, told Al-Ahram Weekly that Israel's encroachment upon Al-Aqsa Mosque had not been sporadic, but, rather, a systematic endeavour that began when it occupied Jerusalem, an attempt to change the cultural history of the city and rewrite its past. Over the last 50 years Israel has made continuous attempts to rewrite the cultural history of the Middle East. Back in 2001, two years after enrolling as a member of the World Heritage Committee, Israel submitted an official request to place 28 Palestinian sites on its World Heritage list as belonging to Israel, among them the historic Arab city of Jerusalem. The move was naturally contested by Arab countries because it went against international law -- including the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and the International Convention of the Protection of International Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972. Israel nevertheless succeeded in registering three areas as its own: the old city of Acre, the Bow Houses in Tel-Aviv, and the Roman fortress at Masada. Two further attempts were made three years ago. One concerned the countries that fall within the Great Rift Valley, and the other Jerusalem. Radwan announced that according to historical evidence "Rowa-Lem- Shem-Yem" or Jerusalem, is an Ancient Egyptian word, written in hieroglyphs in manuscripts and documents dating back to the reign of the Middle Kingdom Pharaoh Senusert III, about 1830 BC. This is much earlier than any existing Hebrew texts. References to the "the Plast people", clearly the Palestinians, are found written in hieroglyphics in New Kingdom manuscripts. Rowa-Lem-Shem-Yem means a city of Canaanite origin and does not mean Jewish or Hebrew land. Radwan pointed out that Jerusalem was completely destroyed in 70AD by Titus, son of the Roman emperor Vespasian and that Emperor Hadrian prohibited any Jew from entering Jerusalem.
