International Religious Freedom Report 2007
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

In November 2004 the Arab-Israeli advocacy group Adalah petitioned the Supreme Court to compel the Government to protect Muslim sites. Adalah charged that all of the locations designated as holy sites were Jewish, and the Government's failure to implement regulations had resulted in desecration and conversion of individual Muslim sites.

Responding to a 2004 Supreme Court order to respond within 60 days, the Government stated in January 2006 that it had appointed an interministerial committee to examine the...

International Religious Freedom Report 2007
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

In November 2004 the Arab-Israeli advocacy group Adalah petitioned the Supreme Court to compel the Government to protect Muslim sites. Adalah charged that all of the locations designated as holy sites were Jewish, and the Government's failure to implement regulations had resulted in desecration and conversion of individual Muslim sites.

Responding to a 2004 Supreme Court order to respond within 60 days, the Government stated in January 2006 that it had appointed an interministerial committee to examine the administrative and budgetary management of holy sites. The Supreme Court, which repeatedly rescheduled the initial hearing since 2004, had still not heard the case by the end of the reporting period. At the end of the reporting period there were 136 designated holy sites in the country, all of which were Jewish.

In 2004 the Arab Association for Human Rights (AAHR) issued a comprehensive report documenting what it referred to as the "destruction and abuse of Muslim and Christian holy places in Israel." In its report, AAHR asserted that 250 non-Jewish places of worship had either been destroyed during and after the 1948 war or made inaccessible to the local Arab population. For example, lands of destroyed Arab villages were given to Jewish farmers, and the surviving mosques in these villages had been used as animal pens or storage depots. In Ein Hod, a town south of Haifa, the mosque was turned into a bar.

International Religious Freedom Report 2007
Released by the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

There were also disputes between the Muslim administrators of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and Israeli authorities regarding Israeli restrictions on Waqf attempts to carry out repairs and physical improvements on the compound and its mosques. Israeli authorities prevented the Waqf from conducting several improvement projects and removing debris from previous restorations to the site, alleging that the Waqf was attempting to alter the nature of the site or to discard antiquities of Jewish origin.
Israeli ...

International Religious Freedom Report 2007
Released by the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

There were also disputes between the Muslim administrators of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount and Israeli authorities regarding Israeli restrictions on Waqf attempts to carry out repairs and physical improvements on the compound and its mosques. Israeli authorities prevented the Waqf from conducting several improvement projects and removing debris from previous restorations to the site, alleging that the Waqf was attempting to alter the nature of the site or to discard antiquities of Jewish origin.
Israeli authorities began excavations near the Mughrabi gate, preparing to build a permanent ramp onto the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount.
Waqf officials were not allowed access to the excavations in early 2007 and claimed they were not consulted in any part of the planning process for either the excavations or the ramp that will be constructed to replace the existing ramp. At the end of this reporting period, the excavations were suspended.


Many Jews were opposed to missionary
activity directed at Jews, and some were hostile toward Jewish converts
to Christianity. The Messianic Jewish and Jehovah's Witnesses
communities accused Yad L'achim, a Jewish religious organization
opposed to missionary activity, of harassing and occasionally
assaulting its members.
In October 2006 the Chief Rabbi of Rehovot's
Ethiopian community warned that if a Christian group in the Tel Aviv
suburb did not cease its activities, community members would bomb its
headquarters. The Rabbi accused the mission of tricking and bribing
Ethiopian Jews into conversion. Rehovot's Chief Rabbi joined the
Ethiopian Rabbi's demand that the municipality evict the group.
Christian and Muslim Israeli-Arab religious leaders complained that
missionary activity that leads to conversions f