Ark of the Covenant - part 2

In recent days, I have been asked, "How do the Israeli authorities react to the find?"
I shall speak frankly. From the information I am able to acquire, it is evident that the authorities do not know how to handle this discovery.
They have a right to be nervous. And I can think of two reasons. The first is political.
Some time ago, a permit was granted to some Israelis to undertake an excavation under the Temple Mount. After a short while, it was reported that workmen had been seen lugging crates into the excavation tunnel.
This aroused the curiosity of the authorities. They sent men in to investigate. It was found that the tunnel penetrated to a spot close under the Dome of the Rock... and high explosives were being set in position, presumably to blow up the place.
If you didn?t know, the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, together named the Haram al-Sharif, comprise the third most important place for the Moslem people.
Just think what sabotage of that site could do! It might well provoke an Islamic Jihad, a "holy war".
The Israeli government desires to maintain good relations with the Arabs. It does not want to disturb the peace with the Arabs.
There are extremists who believe the Dome of the Rock sits illegally on the old Temple Mount. That does not make them extremists. However, it is reported that these men would feel quite safe in provoking a war just to get the mount ? if they knew they had the Ark of the Covenant "on their side".
It is remembered that during the period of the ancient Judges, before Solomon?s Temple was built, the Israelites would take the Ark with them into battle. And they were victorious.
Well, not always. It depended, we are told, upon their faithfulness to their Lord. There was nothing inherent in the Ark itself that brought them victory. Their help came from the Lord.

Nevertheless, there are some modern religious extremists who would not hesitate to provoke a war in order to secure the old Temple site and build a Third Temple ? if they could lay their hands on the Ark, believing its very possession would render them victorious.
One can understand why the Arabs are set on thwarting any future archaeological efforts in this vicinity. As a matter of fact, they have sunk some deep concrete pillars around the southern wall to prevent further digs.
When Ron provided some evidence of the discovery to the authorities, they devised a plan to "test" the water, so to speak. They sought to determine public reaction to a possible announcement of the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant and to a possible building of a new Temple.
The result was a bloody clash and many deaths.
The morning of Monday, October 8, 1990, would go down in history as the "Temple Mount massacre". An ultra-conservative Zionist group known as the Temple Mount Faithful marched up to the Moghrabi Gate, holding aloft a large banner which bore a Star of David and an inscription in Hebrew which read:
TEMPLE MOUNT - THE SYMBOL OF OUR PEOPLE IS IN THE HANDS OF OUR ENEMIES.
The demonstrators hoped to enter through the gate to the Temple Mount itself, march to the Dome of the Rock and there lay a cornerstone for a proposed Third Temple.
This had been the location of the First and Second Temples, of course.
To the Arabs also, the Temple Mount is a site of tremendous importance. It has been a special place to Moslems ever since work began on the Dome of the Rock in the seventh century AD.
The situation was loaded with political dynamite.
In almost no time, an estimated 5,000 militant Arabs amassed inside the walls of the Temple Mount, armed with stones to hurl down upon the approaching marchers.
The Moghrabi Gate through which the zealots planned to pass is not only a mere 150 yards from the front porch of the Al Aqsa Mosque, it also penetrates the southern end of the Western Wall of the mount. The exposed exterior of this wall, known as the Wailing Wall, is most important to Jews. It is, in fact, the single most important Jewish holy place.
This wall is actually part of a retaining buttress built in the late first century BC by Herod the Great, which escaped demolition by the Romans in 70 AD.
It had always been a symbol for Jews scattered over the world.
After the Six Day War of 1967 a large plaza was cleared in front of it and the site dedicated as a formal place of worship. Today, Jews from all over the world gather here to lament that they have no Temple.
However, the Israeli authorities have banned Jewish worship on the Temple Mount itself and restricted access above and below ground. This area remains under the exclusive control of the Moslems.

As the Zionist procession attempted to enter through the Moghrabi Gate, the thousands of Arabs began to rain down showers of stones ? not only upon the demonstrating zealots, but upon the heads of Jews praying at the Wailing Wall.
The result was catastrophic. Eleven Israeli worshippers and eight policemen were injured, while 21 Arabs were shot dead and 125 seriously injured.
Again, on September 24, 1996, as on so many previous occasions, the simmering hostility exploded.
The government had been employing workers to construct a new tourist tunnel in Jerusalem, to cope with the tourist flow in theVia Dolorosa area. Workmen had been digging secretly under the Moslem quarter, enlarging an old tunnel that ran from the Western Wall to the Via Dolorosa.
As they were about to break through at one end, the word got out. The excavation, you see, was close to the Al Aqsa Mosque. A crowd of Arabs rushed to the site and starting throwing stones.
The rioting, by week?s end, had cost the lives of some 70 people.
So we have Jewish extremists... angry Palestinians? and a third potentially explosive factor... the Ark of the Covenant find.
US. News and World Report put it well:
In a land torn by competing historical claims, archaeology is a weapon.
While the authorities (and by this I mean a handful of tight-lipped officials) know of the Ark?s location, they have decided that the matter is too politically volatile for them to go public. An official announcement could provoke "premature" action by fringe groups wanting to build a new Temple.
Government officials regard this as a critical issue, in which the safety of the people must come first.
In view of the prospect of a negotiable peace in the Middle East, the present actions of the government are deliberately against any disclosure of what it knows.


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