BOOK REVIEW/TEMPLE MOUNT WATCH: Another review of Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade, this one in the Scotsman.

Book aims to end clash over Temple Mount

Published Date: 05 December 2009
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem

TRANSCENDING the bitterness of the confrontation between their nations and faiths, Israeli and Palestinian scholars have come together for an unprecedented joint history of the most contested religious site on earth.

A new book, Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade is an antidote to extremism about the holy city's Temple Mount, revered by Jews as site of the biblical temples and sacred to Muslims as the site of the al-Aksa mosque.

[...]

Here's an interesting bit:

During peace negotiations with Israel in 2000, Yasser Arafat reportedly questioned whether two Jewish temples existed on the site, stressing there is no archeological evidence for that. Mr Nusseibeh [Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh, president of al-Quds University], while not affirming the existence of the temples, wrote that it was a site revered by Jews even before what Muslims believe was a journey from al-Aksa to heaven by Mohammed in the seventh century. According to Muslim tradition, the journey started from the rock later covered by the golden dome that has become Jerusalem's foremost symbol.

Amnon Cohen, emeritus professor at the Hebrew University, who contributed a chapter on Turkish rule of the Temple Mount, believes the joint endeavour has political significance. The Palestinian participation, he says, "means they don't disagree with the basic hypothesis that the first and second temples were on the Temple Mount".

But Mustafa Abu Sway, of the Islamic Research Centre at al-Quds and contributor of a chapter, responded: "I have written an Islamic narrative and people can read into it what they want. Ultimately it's a mosque and has been for 1,400 years. When the Muslims arrived the area of the mosque was barren and it has been a mosque through and through."

I've not read the book yet (and won't have time to for some time to come) but if this report is accurate it sounds like equivocation that is being spun differently by each side. I would be more impressed to hear that the Palestinian authors had come straight out and said that there were Jewish temple on the site in antiquity.

Background here.