www.tipp.co.il
19.10.2025
The Headline
Photographic evidence of Palestinian excavations in the ancient level of the Temple Mount
According to the photographs, halls and columns were exposed, probably from the western part of the Royal Court
The eastern side of the Royal Court, which bounded the southern part of the Temple Mount and is mentioned in Josephus's book The Jewish Wars, was converted by the Palestinians into a mosque in 1996. They removed the construction waste from the renovations during the construction of the mosque to a waste site outside the Old City; this waste was seized by Israel and sorted with the aim of extracting archaeological finds from it. According to the photographs, the Palestinians are currently not removing the construction waste from the excavation site, probably following lessons learned from the previous time; according to the photographs, the current waste is being kept in white bags at the excavation site. The photographs indicate another violation, in addition to the previous one in the early 1990s, a very serious violation of profound historical significance, of the status quo on the Temple Mount; the photographs indicate irreversible damage that the Palestinians are causing to artifacts from the heart of the culture of the Jewish people on the Temple Mount. We do not know the exact date of the photographs, but many of the reactions to the photographs are from September.
By Mati Cohen
We have a video posted on social media, and the title in Arabic is: "An underground city in Al-Quds ("the Holy", and in Hebrew Jerusalem), south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque." In our assessment, the entrance to the underground area photographed is from the current level of the Temple Mount, perhaps even from a lower location, for example a house or shop located in the higher part of the Ophel. According to the photographs, the underground city that has been uncovered is located on the ancient level of the Temple Mount, at an estimated height of the Hulda Gate or the area known as Solomon's Stables, which was uncovered in the 1990s as the eastern part of the royal courtyard. In our assessment, therefore, the current structure that the Palestinians uncovered is the western part of the royal courtyard, which was built on the southern wall of the Temple Mount from east to west, during the Second Temple (built by Herod). At the end of the video, the presenter emerges from a shaft to a place that overlooks the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and it is therefore possible that the excavation even uncovered a tunnel that runs along the supporting columns that were on the inside of the western wall of the Temple Mount, which is 488 meters long, and from there it heads to a tunnel that leads to the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is possible that the extent of this exposure is what prompted the author to call it "an underground city in Al-Quds."