Israelis, Palestinians fight over dispute holy site

JERUSALEM -- A 35-foot-wide bulge in an ancient wall has revived a dispute over Jerusalem's most hotly contested holy site.

Jerusalem's mayor and Israeli archaeologists warned Tuesday that some of the massive stone blocks lining the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, are in danger of crashing down on worshippers.

Muslim clerics, who run the site, insisted the wall is stable and accused Israel of trying to fabricate a crisis as a way of asserting control over the shrine in Jerusalem's Old City.

A collapse might set off a cataclysm of Mideast violence because of the sensitivity of the shrine as a key holy site and a political flashpoint that has defied solution. Much lesser issues concerning the site have triggered violence.

Jerusalem's Israeli mayor, Ehud Olmert, said the bulge has been growing steadily. "There are serious grounds for the apprehension that it could collapse," Olmert told Israel Radio. "We have reached the moment of truth."

The bulge is in the wall holding up the southeastern corner of the mosque compound, known to Muslims as the Haram as-Sharif, or "Noble Sanctuary," built on the site of the biblical Jewish Temples.

The Western Wall, a retaining wall of the Temple compound, is just around the corner but is not affected by the bulge. With Jews kept off the hilltop by Muslim restrictions and rabbinical bans, the Western Wall is the holiest place where Jews can pray.

Eilat Mazar, head of Israel's Public Committee for the Protection of the Antiquities on the Temple Mount, said the southern wall has deteriorated beyond repair. She sent a letter Monday to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urging immediate action.

"The wall will collapse," she said. The risk could even be greater during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when tens of thousands of worshippers crowd into the mosque compound, she said. Ramadan this year begins in November.

The outward bulge is the exterior wall of a portion of the compound known as Solomon's Stables, an area renovated and turned into a mosque in recent years. A collapse could rain huge stone blocks, some a yard wide, onto Muslim worshippers.

The bulge appears about halfway up the wall. Beneath it, outside, archaeologists have been excavating for years, but Jews do not pray there.