The U.S. administration is highly involved and interested in reaching a suitable and swift solution to non-Orthodox prayer arrangements at the Western Wall, according to an official in the Prime Minister’s Office, who also said the issue affects Israel’s foreign relations.
Ha'aretz reports:
The U.S. administration is highly involved and interested in reaching a suitable and swift solution to non-Orthodox prayer arrangements at the Western Wall, according to an official in the Prime Minister’s Office, who also said the issue affects Israel’s foreign relations.
Washington regards the problem as sensitive and fears that far-reaching structural changes at the site could spark a confrontation with Palestinians over the Temple Mount, according to Reuven Pinsky, chairman of the PMO’s national heritage department, whose comments were revealed in a recently released protocol of a government meeting in November.
Pinsky was explaining to a committee why it should grant an exemption from issuing a tender in order to enable the PMO to continue working with an architect long involved in the plans for Robinson’s Arch. An egalitarian prayer platform for non-Orthodox worshipers is supposed to be built at the Robinson’s Arch site, south of the existing Western Wall prayer plaza.…
According to Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of Israel’s Movement for Progressive Judaism, the proposed plans for the prayer areas “will rise or fall” on the issue of a shared entrance plaza for the Orthodox and non-Orthodox prayer areas.
“The question is whether someone who comes to visit this site will feel a part of the official Kotel site, or will enter a closed side compound meant for the non-Orthodox denominations,” said Kariv. “As far as we’re concerned, the entire plan can rise and fall on that.”…
As FailedMessiah.com reported many times, the Islamic Waqf that controls the Temple Mount is unlikely in the extreme to allow the modifications to the Western Wall plaza area necessary to make Natan Sharansky's proposal to end the 'Women of the Wall' crisis possible.
Any changes in the physical status quo will likely lead to Arab riots and protests from the Waqf and the Jordanian government. And this essentially makes Sharansky's plan moot.
In the end, the best that will happen will be a joint entrance to the all the Jewish prayer areas with no removal of the Mughrabi Bridge to the Temple Mount.
And this will confine non-Orthodox movements and WoW to a Robinson's Arch area cut off from the Kotel (Western Wall) proper by a large physical impediment.