Prospect Of 3rd Temple Appearing Fully-Built On Temple Mount A Challenge For Mt. Of Olives Cable-Car Plan

The cable car as currently designed does not account for the disaster that could occur in such an event.

Jerusalem, November 27 – Tourism and urban development officials clashed this week over a proposal to construct a cable car connecting the Mount of Olives with the Temple Mount across the Kidron Valley, concerning the possibility that if and when the prophesied Third Temple appears fully-constructed on the sacred plateau, the car’s cables will be severed and might send dozens of tourists plunging to their deaths as a result.

The cable car project has long been envisioned as a way to both alleviate some of the crowding and access problems around the mount and to enhance the area’s status as an Israeli tourist destination. A cable car from the Mount of Olives would create a new route into the Old City from the east, where no convenient access currently exists. Additionally, such an operation would help cement Israeli and Jewish presence in the eastern portion of the city, especially the ancient cemetery that covers much of the western face of the Mount of Olives. However, many Jewish religious thinkers anticipate the sudden appearance of the Beit HaMikdash, or Holy Temple, on the Temple Mount, and the cable car as currently designed does not account for the disaster that could occur in such an event.

Jerusalem Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar warned Mayor Nir Barkat that he would prevail upon City Councillors from the Shas Party, and whoever else on the panel who would listen, not to approve any cable car plan that fails to anticipate the rebuilt Temple materializing at any moment. “A project of this scale and expense would no doubt require the vote of the Council, if not the approval of at least one government ministry,” he explained. “But I cannot in good conscience remain silent when the planners have failed to take the most rudimentary safety measures in light of what our sources foretell.”

Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Aryeh Stern seconded the concern, noting that not only must planners be worried about the sudden appearance of the Third Temple described in the book of Ezekiel, but also the vision of the prophet Zachariah, which vividly describes an earthquake that will split the Mount of Olives in two with such force that a river will flow between the newly separate segments. “There is no telling where on the Mount of Olives the split will occur, but it takes minimal intelligence to understand that few structures, let alone such precisely calibrated and aligned devices as a cable car system, should be expected to pass muster, safety-wise, if that occurs.”

Municipal officials told reporters that the proposal is expected to remain mired in Jerusalem bureaucracy for several decades before any such plan becomes relevant.

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