A week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised American Jews he remained committed to creating an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall, Israeli archeologists warned on Tuesday that the plan would jeopardize one of Jerusalem’s most important excavation sites. […]

Representatives of organizations that support the Western Wall deal, as well as several committee members, charged that the session had been called to provide the government with yet another alibi for not fulfilling its promise to Reform and Conservative Jews. …

Several Knesset members at Tuesday’s meeting questioned the timing of the debate.

“What are we supposed to learn from this story?” asked MK Aliza Lavie of the opposition Yesh Atid party. “Is it that people in this country don’t know how to make decisions? Is it that they don’t know to consult with professionals?”

Any attempt to back out of the deal at this point, she warned, would represent a slap in the face to American Jewry.
“We promised our brothers and sisters a space,” she said, “and that promise has not been fulfilled. Archeology is very important, and so is history. But that can’t be used now as an excuse to override a government decision,” Lavie said.