This past week, Muslim Arabs resumed illegal construction work on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem with utter disregard for the ancient remains lying just beneath the surface, including precious remnants from the First and Second Temple periods. Even as Israeli policemen stood by, Arab construction workers used tractors and other heavy equipment to dig a 400-foot-long trench, 5 feet deep, in order to lay pipes across the 40-acre hilltop compound.

If this is how they treat Judaism’s holiest site now, imagine the level of destruction once Palestinians gain full sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

It isn’t the first time Israel’s government has turned a blind eye to illegal digging and dumping initiated by the Muslim religious trust, known as the Waqf. “The Waqf has been destroying our history for nearly three decades without interference from Israeli authorities, despite the country’s strict antiquities laws,” Hershal Shanks editorialized in 2000. “In late 1999 in the guise of building an emergency exit from the underground area known as Solomon’s Stables (which has been converted into a mosque), the Waqf began removing hundreds of truckloads of archaeologically rich material and dumped it in the Kidron Valley. Ultimately, it removed more than 6,000 tons of earth, allowing the creation of what the police commander of the Jerusalem District called ‘a monumental entry gate’ 200 feet long and 75 feet wide” (Washington Post, July 17, 2000).

The Barak government did nothing to prevent the cultural desecration, despite widespread rebuke from university presidents and professors, media commentators, Knesset members and other political voices in Israel, including Ehud Olmert, who was mayor of Jerusalem at the time. Described by the Associated Press as “Jerusalem’s hard-line mayor,” Olmert accused the Barak government of being pushed around by the Palestinians. “Jewish history is being trampled on with a heavy foot,” Olmert said. “We need to decide if we are the sovereign in Jerusalem or if we are under control of the Waqf there” (AP, Dec. 6, 1999).

Since that time, nothing much has changed, except that Mayor Olmert is now prime minister.

As it happens, the same day news broke about the trench-digging on the Temple Mount this week, Prime Minister Olmert met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to recycle the parameters for “peace” Ehud Barak proposed back in 2001—creating a Palestinian state by pulling out of the West Bank, dividing Jerusalem and giving partial control of the Temple Mount to the Palestinian Authority. It’s that last item—control of the Temple Mount—that will undoubtedly prove to be a sticking point in final negotiations.

But judging by “construction” projects in recent years, in many ways Israel has already forfeited control of its most holy site.