| The lie has already gone round the world, now truth has finally finished tying her running shoes. |
The Jerusalem Waqf said on Wednesday that when Israeli security services conducted searches on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem following a shooting attack at the site, they did not damage or steal any historical items.
Israeli police closed down the Temple Mount on July 14 after three Arab Israelis smuggled guns into the compound and used them to shoot two coppers to death.
The shutdown lasted for two days while police investigated the incident. Israel then reopened the site with newly installed metal detectors and cameras -- security measures that led to two weeks of protests by Paleostinians. The measures were eventually removed.
The Waqf, a Jordanian government institution that administers the Temple Mount, known to Moslems as the Haram al-Sharif, convened a technical committee to evaluate any damage caused by the Israeli police during the crisis.
On Wednesday the committee released its report, which said that Israeli forces had not damaged or stolen any historical objects or documents at the site, which includes mosques, museums and libraries that house Islamic artifacts.
"There are no deficiencies of historical value in the safety boxes, inventory or exhibits," the report said.
However,
the way to a man's heart remains through his stomach...
the report did say Israel had rummaged through and possibly copied computer files and broken into private lockers in order to carry out what it called "unjustified searches."
During the searches Israeli police found several weapons, but no guns or serious explosives, Jerusalem Police Chief Yoram Halevi said.
"We found dozens of knives, slingshots, cudgels, spikes, inciting material, unwent
kaboom!munitions, stun grenades, binoculars -- but we haven’t yet found caches of live ammunition," he told Army Radio at the time.