A tender for the renovation of the bridge to the Mughrabi Gate through which Jews enter the Temple Mount requires applicants to sign a non-disclosure agreement to not publish any details about the tender, including the fact that the tender exists, Yediot Aharonot reported on Thursday.
According to the report, contractors toured the site last month and the main renovation work involves replacing the wood of the bridge. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation told Yediot Aharonot that they are operating according to the instructions of the Prime Minister's Office.
In June, an expert engineer for the Western Wall Heritage Foundation warned that the Mughrabi Bridge is in immediate danger of collapse.
The wood of the bridge will not afford safe use for an extended period, wrote the engineer in a document, advising that the bridge be replaced "without delay" with a steel bridge in order to avoid constant maintenance and protect the bridge against fire.
The engineer stressed that the wood is extremely dry and cracked and that past attempts to treat the wood had failed, according to Channel 13.
Previous attempts to build a new bridge at the site failed in 2011 and in 2014, after pressure by the Jordanian government. The wood bridge has served as a "temporary" replacement for a damaged stone ramp since 2003. Multiple warnings concerning the bridge's condition have been issued in the past decade.
Palestinian media expressed outrage in June after the report on the bridge was published, claiming that the Jerusalem municipality had announced that it intended to build a new bridge to the Mughrabi Gate. The Jerusalem Municipality has still not publicly announced any plans to take any such action.
Fakhri Abu Diab, a Palestinian activist from the Silwan neighborhood of east Jerusalem, told the Palestinian Safa news in June that the municipality planned to construct the bridge after the warning issued by the engineer.
Abu Diab claimed that the planned bridge would be as wide as five meters and about 70 meters long. The activist added that excavations would need to be conducted in order to build the new bridge, warning that this could cause damage to the Western Wall.
The Palestinian report claimed that building such a bridge would change the reality and character of the site and "Judaize" it, calling it a "dangerous precedent, a systematic attack on the Islamic endowment, and a blatant interference in the affairs of the Islamic Endowment Department in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque."
In July, Likud MK Miri Regev warned that urgent construction work must be carried out on Mughrabi Bridge.
“It is forbidden to wait another moment with the demolition of the bridge and the construction of an appropriate replacement,” she said. “The writing is on the wall, and the blood [of the victims] will be on the hands of all those who [did not act] and remained silent.”
The bridge poses a safety hazard for those who use it and for those who pray at the designated women’s section of the Western Wall because it passes over their heads, Regev said.