JERUSALEM -- A 35-foot-wide bulge in an ancient wall has revived a dispute over Jerusalem's most hotly contested holy site.\nJerusalem's mayor and Israeli archaeologists warned Tuesday that some of the massive stone blocks lining the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, are in danger of crashing down on worshippers.\nMuslim clerics, who run the site, insisted the wall is stable and accused Israel of trying to fabricate a crisis as a way of asserting control over the shrine in Jerusalem's Old City.\nA collapse might set off a cataclysm of Mideast violence because of the sensitivity of the shrine as a key holy site and a political flashpoint that has defied solution. Much lesser issues concerning the site have triggered violence.\nJerusalem's Israeli mayor, Ehud Olmert, said the bulge has been growing steadily. "There are serious grounds for the apprehension that it could collapse," Olmert told Israel Radio. "We have reached the moment of truth."\nThe bulge is in the wall holding up the southeastern corner of the mosque compound, known to Muslims as the Haram as-Sharif, or "Noble Sanctuary," built on the site of the biblical Jewish Temples.
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