Religious Services minister says Little Western Wall should be state-run

Little Western Wall is revered for proximity to where Temple Holy of Holies stood, but location in Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City means administration over the site is a combustible issue.

By JEREMY SHARON
Religious Services Minister Yitzhak Vaknin prays at the Little Western Wall site in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday (photo credit: COURTESY RELIGIOUS SERVICES MINISTRY)
Religious Services Minister Yitzhak Vaknin prays at the Little Western Wall site in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday
(photo credit: COURTESY RELIGIOUS SERVICES MINISTRY)
Religious Services Minister Yitzhak Vaknin has called for the site known as the “Little Western Wall” in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City to be run by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, a step which would likely generate severe opposition from the neighborhood’s Arab population.
The Little Western Wall is a more northern segment of the better-known Western Wall site, but is considered to be especially holy due to its close proximity to where the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temples was located.
For that reason, there are frequent prayers at the site, but various items required for prayer services may not be kept there, such as an ark for housing Torah scrolls or prayer books due to concerns not to change the status quo and out of fear that such items may be desecrated.
The Little Western Wall is under police administration because of the sensitivity of the site; it has never been declared a holy site under Israel’s Law for the Protection of the Holy Places.
In a visit on Monday, Vaknin said he believed the time has come for this situation to change.
“Different elements have an interest in keeping the present situation, [but] I will work towards a change,” said the minister.
“The responsibility is upon the Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz,” he continued. Rabinowitz also serves as the chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.
Vaknin added that Rabinowitz and the foundation were “suitable to take on this mission, and to tend to the site and turn it into a magnet for worshipers and tourists.”
At the end of his visit, the minister lit the Hanukkah candelabra at the site in celebration of the current Hanukkah holiday