Moshe Dayan Gave Away the Temple Mount 40 Years Ago

I sometimes wonder if there would be as fierce of a battle over Jerusalem in these upcoming negotiations, if Moshe Dayan didn't give away the temple mount 40 years ago. When Israel gained possession of the Temple compound during the Six Day War, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol wanted to create a multi-faith council to run the compound. Dayan thought it should remain in Muslim possession. Why? In his biography Dayan clearly stated that the last thing he wanted was the Beit Hamikdash rebuilt. So Dayan "gave" the Temple Mount back to the Arabs and because he wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be a third Temple. There was nothing that Prime Minister Eshkol could do about it. After all Dayan had just become one of the biggest heros in Israeli history. One of our biggest heroes may go down in history as one of our biggest screw-ups

The Arabs Want the Overpass to Collapse, to Keep Jews Out´ AruzshevaThursday, February 8, 2007 / 20 Shevat 5767 MK Eldad:

.........."It's true," Eldad said, "that the original sin was when the Jewish People, immediately after the Six Day War in 1967, ceded its hold on the Temple Mount in an unholy alliance between the Chief Rabbinate and Moshe Dayan - each side for its own reasons - but now the danger is that the Arab sovereignty on the Temple Mount will spill over to the Western Wall plaza, and from there to other places."

Then-Defense Minister Dayan, just days after Israel's liberation of the Old City, informed the Muslims running the Temple Mount that they could continue to run the mosques there - and later went further by preventing Jewish prayer all over the Mount.

"It was evident that if we did not prevent Jews from praying in what was now a mosque compound," Dayan later wrote, "matters would get out of hand and lead to a religious clash... As an added precaution, I told the chief of staff to order the chief army chaplain to remove the branch office he had established in the building which adjoins the mosque compound."