Media Puts Distorted Words in Mouths
of Rachel's Tomb's Supporters

 

Ha'aretz Newspaper,  Wednesday, July 12, 2000

Chief Rabbis Prepared To
Forgo Control Of Certain 'Holy Places'
But Old City Sites Will Need
Tripartite Religious Agreement

By Amir Oren
Ha'aretz Correspondent

"The night before Prime Minister Ehud Barak was to leave for Camp David, hesent a special emissary to the two chief rabbis, Yisrael Lau and Eliahu Bakshi-Doron. The emissary was a general who usually isn't in uniform: Maj. Gen. Yaakov "Mendy" Orr, government coordinator in the territories, who is on Barak's staff at the Camp David summit. His mission: to find out where the chief rabbis stand - and what they'll say to the public - about the religious issues at stake in the negotiations.

"Orr went back to Barak after two hours with partial success. On one issue, at least, the rabbis will stand by Barak. But that issue, no matter how important, is secondary to the much more critical issue: the Temple Mount.

"Lau and Bakshi-Doron told Orr - and through him, Barak - that they would not oppose transfer of control over Rachel's Tomb, Joseph's Tomb and even the Tomb of the Patriarchs, to the Palestinians, as long as appropriate measures were taken to guarantee access, prayer rights and security for Jews at the sites. Neither the halakha nor tradition, they said, requires Jewish sovereignty over graves, including the graves of the religious pantheon. Jews have always given in to the geography that gives others sovereignty over the final resting spots of Jews, from Moses on Mount Nevo in Jordan, to Rabbi Nahman of Breslau in Uman in Ukraine. There is always the matter of the ownership of the property, but it too is a matter that is derived from sovereignty.

"This is substantial support for the expected IDF withdrawal from the remaining territories in Hebron, Bethlehem and Nablus in an agreement with the Palestinians. But it does not solve the Temple Mount issue.

"The preliminary staff work before the departure for Camp David was based on the assumption that the Israeli public would agree to hand over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem outside the Old City to Palestinian jurisdiction. Israeli Jerusalem in July 2000 is eight times the size of Jerusalem on June 5, 1967. In exchange for transferring the Arab neighborhoods to Palestine, within the context of an umbrella municipality, Israel will not only finally win international recognition of its capital, but Israeli Jerusalemites will enjoy a deep cut in their city taxes.

"However, there is no easy solution for the Temple Mount issue. The chief rabbis agree that the halakha forbids any Jew from going onto the Mount until the conditions are right (the reconstruction of the Temple, with the arrival of the messiah), but they do not believe that Jewish sovereignty over the Mount can be relinquished. The Palestinians, through the Waqf, would never dare to relinquish the claims to the Mount that they hold on behalf of the Arab world and  Islam.

"It's a religious problem more than a political one. And that's where a formula might be found for a tripartite, Jewish-Muslim-Christian administration that would preserve the status quo - but that's a formula that still needs a rhetorical juggle that would win approval not only from the Israelis and Palestinians but from authorities far from the Holy Land."
 

News from Hebron
The Hebron Press Office
July 12, 2000:

The Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron relates to the religious legality of holy places:

The Rabbi's position: Temple Mount, site of Beit HaMikdash, the holiest and dearest site to the Jewish people, must remain under full Israeli sovereignty."

As for Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Rabbi decrees: "Hebron and its surroundings, as with other cities, are holy to the Jewish people and must remain under Israeli sovereignty. If, in these other places holy to the Jewish people, prays are conducted by other religions, it is permissible that those believers be allowed to pray at these sites.

In an article in Ha'aretz newspaper today it was written: Lau and Bakshi-Doron (said) that they would not oppose transfer of control over Rachel's Tomb, Joseph's Tomb and even the Tomb of the Patriarchs, to the Palestinians, as long as appropriate measures were taken to guarantee access, prayer rights and security for Jews at the sites.

Later in the morning, in an interview  on Dalya Yairi's news program, Rabbi  Bakshi-Doron said: "...We clarified that there is a big difference between holy sites and cemeteries, even the most important ones like Ma'arat HaMachpela,  Kever Rachel, Kever Shmuel HaNavi, and Temple Mount.

...We spoke, of course, from a religious legal standpoint, not from a security or policy standpoint. Legally, there is no sanctity in a cemetery.  They are sanctified for reasons of prayer and they should be respected, at the most, as is a synagogue. Perhaps there is importance in that the owner of the grave should also own the place of the grave. Avraham Avinu purchased Ma'arat  haMachpela in order to be buried there...with cemeteries it does not make any difference who owns it, who is sovereign, what must be
protected at all costs is the proper security access in order to pray there.  Therefore, legally, we said that it makes no difference who is sovereign at Ma'arat HaMachpela, legally, like synagogues and cemeteries all over the world, which are holy as places of prayer..."

An article by Associated Press Writer Ron Kampeas entitled, "West Bank Settlers Divided," quotes several Jewish West Bank settlers - who maintain that they were misquoted.  The article claims that "a division has arisen in the settler movement between those who know they are likely to keep their homes, and those [who are likely to be uprooted]."  Kampeas quotes "settler pioneer" David Zohar as saying, "The idea of one settlement movement is over… We're split."   As an example of this "split," Kampeas quotes long-time Ma'aleh Adumim resident Shmuel Bar-Shalom as saying, "Small settlements, 10, 20 families, were created as provocations…  They have no right to exist.''

Both of the above "spokesmen" deny the quotes attributed to them. Bar-Shalom told Ron Meir on Arutz-7's  "Now Until Midnight" program last night that he "categorically denies" the quote, and that the word 'provocations' "never passed my lips."  Kampeas, who also spoke with Meir last night, stood by his quote, but minutes later, the second "settler" quoted - David Zohar - also appeared on the show and similarly denied saying that which was said in his name:  "I said that the nation is split - if he understood from this that the settlement movement is in trouble, then he is mistaken… he took the words out of context."  The interviews with
Kampeas, Bar-Shalom, and Zohar can be heard at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/engclips/140700/ap-ron-kampeas.ram.

Meir Indor of the Terror Victims Association - whose researchers brought the AP article to Arutz-7's attention - said today, "What made us sit up and take notice is that these two people [Zohar and Bar-Shalom] are well-known in the settlement movement, and we knew that they would not make statements of this nature.  We can only wonder how many misquotes there are that we *don't* notice!…  We have had bad experience with foreign news agencies who assume that Israelis don't read their foreign reports and don't check the accuracy of their quotes.  Now, however, the internet helps us keep tabs on this much more easily."

In a related item, Reuters has been cited for implying that a Yesha resident said something he did not.  Megan Goldin wrote this week that Beit El resident Baruch Gordon "said that if Barak brings a peace deal back from the Camp David summit, then settlers will wage the sort of protests that tore Israel apart in 1995, the year a right-wing Jew shot Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin dead for agreeing to trade land for peace with the Palestinians."  Upon reading the article, Gordon said that he was "incensed at the connection made between my words and the assassination of Rabin.  I said only that settlers would in fact respond with strong protests, similar to those held when Rabin was Prime Minister, and nothing more.  I am disappointed that the writer chose to make other, more sinister implications."

The Committee For Rachel's Tomb
David Landau, Director, P.O. Box 1029, Derech Efrata, 90435, Israel
rachtomb@netvision.net.il   Fax:  972-2-960-5008

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