Four months after the Temple Mount was reopened to non-Muslim visitors, there remains virtually no archeological supervision at the site for the fourth straight year, archeologists said this week.

Despite stringent police checks and supervision of construction materials going in to the bitterly contested holy site over the last year, archeologists have decried the fact that there is no day-to-day archeological supervision of even the authorized repair work done there by the Islamic Wakf, which administers the site.

The Antiquities Authority Jerusalem regional archeologist, Jon Seligman, who is nominally in charge of supervision at the site, said that despite the August 20 reopening of the compound to Jews and Christians the situation on the Temple Mount regarding archeological supervision "has not really changed for us" compared to when he was barred entry altogether from the site for almost three years.

By law, the Antiquities Authority is charged with supervision of the holy site, but Seligman, like other non-Muslims, was barred from the site completely for nearly three years until the recent reopening of the mount owing to concerns over renewed Palestinian violence at the site.

Four months after the peaceful reopening of the mount to non-Muslim visitors, senior political echelons are aware that the archeological supervision of the holy site has not resumed as regulated by law, the Justice Ministry said Thursday.

Responding to a query to Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein, the ministry said that the issue of the lack of archeological supervision is "known by the political echelon, which proffers its view in accordance with the complexities at the site."

Indeed, while the Antiquities Authority has maintained a low profile on the matter, choosing for example not to be interviewed for this article, independent archeologists have been speaking up over the lack of supervision at the site, which was apparent again last week when a tractor carried out police-authorized repair work near the Dome of the Rock.

Bemoaning the "insufferable indifference" of the Antiquities Authority on the issue, Hebrew University professor of archeology Eilat Mazar charged that the authority had failed to function as the supervisory body it is mandated to be by law, noting that it has even failed to enforce its own rules barring the use of cement by Jordanian engineers to fix the bulge on the southern wall of the Temple Mount.

Mazar, a leading spokeswoman of the independent non-partisan Committee against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, said that her committee will shortly renew and intensify its public campaign to seek full archeological supervision at the site.

The office of Education Minister Limor Livnat, which oversees the Antiquities Authority, declined request for comment, referring queries on the matter to the Prime Minister´s Office.

The Prime Minister´s Office said Thursday in a generally worded statement that "the issue of archeology on the Temple Mount is carried out in joint cooperation with several bodies including the police and the Antiquities Authority, cooperation which was seen in [the resolution to] the bulge on the southern wall of the Temple Mount."

Wakf officials, who have opposed the reentry of non-Muslim visitors to the site to begin with, say they have their own inspectors on the compound. Internal Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said last month that the recent reopening of the mount to visitors did not solve the issues of archeological inspection at the site.

At the same time, he pledged to prevent further archeological destruction caused by unsupervised and unauthorized Wakf construction, such as the building of an immense mosque at the Solomon´s Stables six years ago . The stables, an underground architectural support of the mount, are now home to the largest mosque in Israel, which seats 30,000 people. (© 1995-2003, The Jerusalem Post 12/19/03)