The question of Israel’s responsibility to prevent the destruction of ancient remains on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is now before Israel’s Supreme Court. The case demands a difficult and complex balancing of Muslim rights to administer and control the Temple Mount, on the one hand, and the Israel government’s obligation to enforce laws regarding the protection of archaeological sites, on the other.

Needless to say, in the political and religious cauldron that is the Middle East, other ramifications not strictly legal roil about the fringes of the case.

In 1983, BAR published an influential and widely cited article offering a new theory on the location of the First and Second Temple on the Temple Mount.^a Critical evidence for his theory, the author charged, had recently been covered up by dirt and plantings placed on the Temple Mount by Muslim authorities. Other evidence for the author’s contentions regarding the location of the Temple had been covered by paving. This was not all. Unauthorized excavations by Muslim authorities for nonarchaeological purposes had uncovered ancient remains, including what was probably a Herodian wall 16 feet long and 6 feet wide; some of the remains were dismantled and the rest covered up—all without archaeological supervision and without even giving archaeologists an opportunity to study and record the remains.