TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH:

Dichter rules area near Temple Mount off-limits to Muslim burial
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent

Police have prevented Muslim burial at the foot of the Temple Mount for several months, as Public Security Minister Avi Dichter responded to pleas to reserve the area as a significant archeological site.

The area is one of the most sensitive in Jerusalem's Old City, bordering on the eastern wall of the Temple Mount and running parallel to it.

Dichter became convinced recently that a burial area at the southeast foot of the mount, outside the walls, had stretched into an area defined as a national park and an area of great archaeological significance, an area which had not previously been used for burial.

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The archaeologists persuaded the police that the area "annexed" for the burial ground was tremendously important archaeologically.

[Archaeologist Gabriel] Barkai says it is a rare contact point between Second Temple-era construction and earlier remnants from the First Temple age.

"Muslim burial on the site, which was never a cemetery in the past, could end any possibility of excavating the area in the future, as has been done at the foot of the southern wall and the bottom of part of the Western Wall," Barkai noted in the petition.

The court heard that the area had well-preserved 2000 year old construction from Herod's time and a clear seamline between the northern construction, Hasmonean, and the southern construction, Herod's. British archaeologist Charles Warren, who excavated there 140 years ago, found cornerstones for the five lowest layers of construction built into a layer of terra rosa, which includes remains from the First Temple. The first sealing rings stamped "for the King," found in Israel, dated to late 8th Century B.C.E., were found in the red soil.

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