Knesset Member Professor Aryeh Eldad is proposing that Israel “cut up and move” the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount "when the third Temple will be built."
The MK, referred to the time of the Messiah, when the Third Holy Temple, or the Beit HaMikdash HaShlishi, as it is called in Hebrew, will be built, noting it would seem that the two structures could not exist in the same space, on the same site, at the same time.
During a march around the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem on the night of Tisha B'Av conducted by the Women in Green movement,
Eldad stood near the Lions' Gate and exhorted participants to “remember the destruction of the First and Second Temples.... the uprooting of [Jewish towns in] Gush Katif and northern Samaria.
"Even today there are attempts to destroy [Jewish] communities,” Eldad said. “This circling won't take us farther, but rather will bring us closer, closer to a solution to the heart of the problem regarding the sovereignty over the State of Israel, sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
"We should not avoid it with any sort of judicial excuse, nor postpone it with a deal on building 100 homes instead of 10,” he added, making reference to the recent negotiations over the destruction of a neighborhood in the town of Beit El.
"We must discuss the core issues – not just talk, but rather, also act."
Eldad said much could be learned from the deal signed recently regarding Givat Ha'Ulpana in Beit El. “It is that they decided there not to demolish the homes, but rather, to cut them in pieces,” he noted.
Part of the proposal advanced by the government in order to vacate land that Palestinian Authority Arabs claimed was not owned by the Arab who had sold it to Israelis and the Supreme Court ruled in their favor without waiting for the lower court's decision on the ownership, was that the houses -- which would not be destroyed -- would be sawed into parts and then would be reassembled elsewhere, on another section of land owned by the military in the area of Beit El.
"Let us learn that even more so, this applies when the time comes to build the Holy Temple, and that will be soon. We will then cut up the structure which is there now,” he proposed.
“We will cut it up, and they can take it wherever they want – because that is where the Third Holy Temple should and will stand – speedily in our days!”
El-Aksa was first built as a small prayer house in the 6th century C.E., expanded and rebuilt in the 12th century after the Crusaders used it as a church. The Holy Temples stood for hundreds of years, from the 10th century B.C.E. on, except for a brief hiatus after the first Temple's destruction, and until the second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., well over 500 years before Islam was created.