Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami,

handbook prepared for British Mandate officials published just prior to the outbreak of another round of Arab riots that led to 133 Jewish dead, L.G.A. Cust, himself a former Palestine District Officer of Jerusalem, wrote of an attempt to secure the formal transfer of the “Wailing Wall”, part of the Temple Mount retaining walls, to Jewish ownership four years previously, that “the Military Governor...discouraged the pursuit of the matter in view of the sensitive state of Arab opinion.”1 The very same terminology was employed by the former Deputy to the President of Israel’s Supreme Court, Professor Menachem Elon, when he wrote, in a decision to prohibit Jews from worshipping on the Temple Mount, that the site possessed “great sensitivity...extraordinary sensitivity that has no parallel anywhere”.2 In the name of that sensitivity, his adjudication prohibited a Jew from entering the holy site adorned with phylacteries or wearing a prayer shawl. 1 Yisrael Medad is responsible for Educational Programming and Information resources at the Menache