What are the political implications of Israeli archeology and the discovery of what’s believed to be the tomb of Herod the Great? And what do they have to do with Palestinian denial of the existence of two Jewish temples in Jerusalem? The LA Times gave op-ed space to Professor Walter Reich to explain:
In 1983, I saw how the unearthing of evidence of the Jewish past gives heart to some Israelis. While researching a book on the West Bank, I visited the Jewish settlement of Shiloh, in the northern West Bank. Archeologists were digging at the nearby site of ancient Shiloh, which in biblical times was the first capital of Israel. It was in Shiloh that, according to the Hebrew Bible, the Ark of the Covenant rested. Every evening the archeologists would display their finds. When they showed artifacts from the Israelite period, the settlers cheered; for them this was proof that they were now living in the ancient heart of the land of Israel.
Small wonder that archeological finds like these provoke many Palestinians to deny that such discoveries, and any other evidence of Jewish history in either Israel or the West Bank, have anything to do with Jews. After the recent announcement that Herod’s tomb had been found, the Palestinian response was quick and sharp. A Palestinian official said the finding lacked scientific credibility and was driven by ideological motivations.
But this episode of archeological denial pales in comparison with the decades of denial in the case of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which is known to Arabs as Haram al Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary.
In 1930, when Britain administered the area, the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem noted that the Temple Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.” But at the Camp David summit in 2000, Yasser Arafat insisted that a Jewish temple had existed not on the Temple Mount but in Nablus. And an Arafat aide, Saeb Erekat, said, to President Clinton’s amazement, “I don’t believe there was a temple on top of the Haram, I really don’t.” Mahmoud Abbas, the current Palestinian Authority president, later agreed with Erekat, as did the mufti of Jerusalem. Arafat later went further and denied the temple existed anywhere in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, including Nablus.
Further reading on the issue here.
UPDATE May 30: Et tu, Jordan?
