Islamic leaders on Tuesday called for a new wave of violence against Israel over an archeological excavation near the Temple Mount. The threats came as archeologists pressed ahead with a three-week-old salvage excavation in the archeological garden outside the Temple Mount ahead of the planned construction of a new bridge to the Mughrabi Gate. "The danger in Jerusalem has increased. It is high time for the intifada of the Islamic people," the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Raed Salah, told reporters near the holy site on Tuesday. "The continued Israeli aggression on Al-Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem require all Palestinians to unite and remember that our battle is with the occupation," said Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas called on the Islamic world to intervene to halt the work. The bridge, which is being built under the auspices of Israel's Antiquities Authority, will replace the temporary bridge which has been constructed on the section of the Western Wall allocated for women's prayer after the original stone ramp leading up to the Mughrabi Gate was removed, having been deemed unsafe by city engineers. Israeli officials repeatedly emphasized Tuesday that the work under way at the site was outside the confines of the Temple Mount, and posed no danger to the mosque at the site. "The construction of the bridge, located in its entirety outside the Temple Mount, has no impact on the mount itself and certainly poses no danger to it," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said.
"There is nothing on earth that can cause damage to the walls of the Temple Mount, and certainly not to any structures inside," said Dr. Gideon Avni, the director of excavations and surveys at the Israel Antiquities Authority.