"Had the Arabs not provoked the war of 1967, Israel would never have gone to war to take the Old City. But they did provoke the war, and their loss of Jerusalem was the price of that .. decision.
The first action the Israelis took in Jerusalem was to raze the small Arab neighborhood at the foot of the Western Wall, so as to enable hundreds of thousands of Jews to visit the sole remnant of the Temple complex. The second thing they did was to return civilian control of the Temple Mount* itself to the Muslim waqf (religious endowment).
This was a sign of respect that no one in the world could have foreced upon them, nor had anyone called for it...
Certainly no credit was given for it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a nation that has just won a defensive war to hand over the holiest place in the world to the enemies who have just tried to destroy it."
--Lozowick, p142
*Also the site of the Al Aqsa mosque that Hezam is writing about.