These Palestinians felt that the Israelis were trying to subvert the spirit or words of the Declaration of Principles by opening the second entrance. One must keep in mind that the Western Wall Tunnels runs parallel to the Western Wall and under the extreme eastern part of the Arab Quarter. It in no way ever goes under the Temple Mount and does nothing to cause structural deficiencies to any of the structures on the Mount.
The Palestinians claimed that the Israelis were undermining the Dome of the Rock and other holy sites on the Mount with the excavations. This is nothing but a pack of lies spoken to generate the kind of response that occurred. The riots occurred because people believed that the Temple Mount was under attack by Israelis.
I had visited Israel two years ago and visited the Temple Mount, Western Wall and Western Wall Tunnels while living in Jerusalem. The visit to the Tunnels was especially impressive since it appears to my untrained eye to be a magnificent piece of engineering to keep the dozens of buildings along the Western Wall from collapsing into the excavation tunnel as well as the attention to detail which allowed a visitor to see the mammoth sizes of stones utilized in building the Western Wall facing. You can see pictures of the Tunnels as well as other sites in and around Israel at my Picture Gallery of Israel. Some of the stones in the wall are estimated to weigh over 400 tons. 400 tons!
There is no excuse for the violence that occurred. The Palestinians should be held accountable for their duplicitous and patently false statements about the location of the Tunnels. However, Israeli officials should also be blamed for not involving Palestinians in the process of excavation and understanding the goals of the Tunnels. This site has great tourism potential and the riots that took place should not stand in the way of such a promising economic boom to both Israelis and Palestinians.
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