Editing Western Wall (section)

===First years under Israeli rule (1967–1969)===
====Declarations after the conquest====
[[File:צנחנים בכותל המערבי.jpg|thumb|right|The iconic image of Israeli soldiers shortly after the capture of the Wall during the [[Six-Day War]]]]

Following Israel's victory during the 1967 [[Six-Day War]], the Western Wall came under Israeli control. Brigadier Rabbi [[Shlomo Goren]] proclaimed after its capture that "Israel would never again relinquish the Wall", a stance supported by Israeli Minister for Defence [[Moshe Dayan]] and Chief of Staff General [[Yitzhak Rabin]].<ref name=JR67>{{cite book |author1=Maurice David Japheth |author2=P. K. Rajiv |title=The Arab Israel conflict: an Indian viewpoint |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3qm7AAAAIAAJ |year=1967 |publisher=Pearl Publications |page=19 |quote=The Chief Chaplain of the Army, Brigadier (Rabbi) Goren, offered prayers for four hours at the Wall. He proclaimed that Israel would never again relinquish the Wall. A little later, the Minister for Defence, Moshe Dayan, accompanied by the Chief of Staff, General Yitzhak Rabin, arrived. They repeated the pledge of the Rabbi. "Today we have reunited Jerusalem. We have returned to all that is holy in our land. We have returned, never to be parted from it again," Dayan said.}}</ref> Rabin described the moment Israeli soldiers reached the Wall:

<blockquote>"There was one moment in the Six-Day War which symbolized the great victory: that was the moment in which the first paratroopers—under [[Mordechai Gur|Gur]]'s command—reached the stones of the Western Wall, feeling the emotion of the place; there never was, and never will be, another moment like it. Nobody staged that moment. Nobody planned it in advance. Nobody prepared it and nobody was prepared for it; it was as if Providence had directed the whole thing: the paratroopers weeping—loudly and in pain—over their comrades who had fallen along the way, the words of the [[Kaddish]] prayer heard by Western Wall's stones after 19 years of silence, tears of mourning, shouts of joy, and the singing of '[[Hatikvah]]'".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign+Relations/Israels+Foreign+Relations+since+1947/1995-1996/Address+to+the+Knesset+by+Prime+Minister+Rabin+on+Jerusalem.htm |title=Address to the Knesset by Prime Minister Rabin on Jerusalem, May 29, 1995 |last=Rabin |first=Yitzchak |date=May 29, 1995 |publisher=Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs}}</ref></blockquote>

====Demolition of the Moroccan Quarter====
[[File:Western Wall area and Moroccan Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem map by Survey of Palestine map 1-2,500 (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Moroccan Quarter (cell J9) surrounding the Western Wall (numbered 62) in the 1947 [[Survey of Palestine]] map. The two mosques demolished after 1967 are shown in red.]]

Forty-eight hours after capturing the wall, the military, without explicit government order,{{sfn|Gorenberg|2007|p=45}} hastily proceeded to demolish the entire [[Moroccan Quarter]], which stood {{convert|4|m}} from the Wall.<ref>Joost R. Hiltermann, 'Teddy Kollek and the Native Question,' in Annelies Moors, Toine van Teeffelen, Sharif Kanaana, Ilham Abu Ghazaleh (eds.) [https://books.google.com/books?id=FsjgmSPiWvsC&pg=PA55 ''Discourse and Palestine: Power, Text and Context''], Het Spinhuis, 1995 pp. 55–65 [55–56]</ref> The Sheikh Eid Mosque, built on the site of one of Jerusalem's earliest [[madrassa|Islamic schools]] (the ''Afdiliyyah''), was pulled down to make way for the plaza.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kedar |first=Benjamin Z. |last2=Weksler-Bdolah |first2=Shlomit |last3=Da'ādli |first3=Tawfiq |date=2012 |title=The Madrasa Afḍaliyya / Maqām Al-Shaykh 'Īd: An Example of Ayyubid Architecture in Jerusalem |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44092161 |journal=Revue Biblique (1946-) |volume=119 |issue=2 |pages=271–287 |issn=0035-0907}}</ref> 106 Arab families consisting of 650 people were ordered to leave their homes at night. When they refused, bulldozers began to demolish the buildings with people still inside, killing one person and injuring a number of others.<ref>{{cite book |author=Tom Segev |title=1967 |publisher=Metropolitan Books |year=2007 |pages=400–401}}</ref><ref>Ari Shavit,[http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/jerusalem-born-thinker-meron-benvenisti-has-a-message-for-israelis-stop-whining.premium-1.469447 'Jerusalem-born thinker Meron Benvenisti has a message for Israelis: Stop whining,'] ''[[Haaretz]]'', October 11, 2012.</ref><ref>[[Gershom Gorenberg]], ''The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount''. Oxford University Press, 2002 p. 102.</ref><ref>[[Henry Cattan]], ''The Palestine Question'', Taylor & Francis, 1988 p. 256.</ref>

According to [[Eyal Weizman]], [[Chaim Herzog]], who later became Israel's sixth president, took much of the credit for the destruction of the neighbourhood:

<blockquote>When we visited the Wailing Wall we found a toilet attached to it ... we decided to remove it and from this we came to the conclusion that we could evacuate the entire area in front of the Wailing Wall ... a historical opportunity that will never return. ... We knew that the following Saturday [sic Wednesday], June 14, would be the Jewish festival of [[Shavuot]] and that many will want to come to pray ... it all had to be completed by then.<ref>{{cite book |last=Weizman |first=Eyal |title=Hollow Land |year=2007 |publisher=[[Verso Books|Verso]] |location=London |isbn=978-1-84467-125-0 |page=38|url=https://archive.org/details/hollowlandisrael00weiz}}</ref></blockquote>

The narrow pavement, which could accommodate a maximum of 12,000 per day, was transformed into an enormous plaza that could hold in excess of 400,000.<ref>{{cite book |last=Teller |first=Matthew |title=Nine Quarters of Jerusalem |year=2022 |publisher=[[Other Press]] |isbn=978-1-6354-2335-8 |chapter=12}}</ref> Several months later, the pavement close to the wall was excavated to a depth of two and half metres, exposing an additional two courses of large stones.<ref>{{cite book |author=Meron Benvenisti |title=Jerusalem: the Torn City |year=1976 |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |pages=312–313}}</ref>

A complex of buildings against the wall at the southern end of the plaza, that included Madrasa Fakhriya and the house that the Abu al-Sa'ud family had occupied since the 16th century, were spared in the 1967 destruction, but demolished in 1969.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=Cbd1ALFq9hAC&dq=simone+ricca+fakhiriya&pg=PA67 Reinventing Jerusalem: Israel's Reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter after 1967, Simone Ricca], pp. 67–113</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Unearthing Jerusalem: 150 Years of Archaeological Research in the Holy City |editor=Gideon Avni and Katharina Galor |chapter=Mamluk and Ottoman Jerusalem |author=Robert Schick |pages=475–490}}</ref> The section of the wall dedicated to prayers was thus extended southwards to double its original length, from {{convert|28|to|60|m}}, while the {{convert|4|m}} space facing the wall grew to {{convert|40|m}}.

The narrow, approximately {{convert|120|m2}} pre-1948 alley along the wall, used for Jewish prayer, was enlarged to {{convert|2400|m2}}, with the entire Western Wall Plaza covering {{convert|20000|m2|acre}}, stretching from the wall to the Jewish Quarter.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=104 |title=Heritage, Nationalism and the Shifting Symbolism of the Wailing Wall; June 1967: Erasing The Past |last=Ricca |first=Simone |date=Summer 2005 |publisher=[[Institute for Palestine Studies|Institute of Jerusalem (Palestine) Studies]]}}</ref>