A picture of the inside of the Dome of the Rock, which was built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the ancient Jewish Temples were built, reveals the respect that the Palestinians have for a place whose ground is the holiest spot on Earth for the Jewish people:
Palestinians have treated the area of the Temple Mount with disdain for decades. Often they have displayed an active desire to destroy any evidence that the site was where the Jewish Temples stood in an effort to discredit the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, which dates back roughly 3,000 years.
In September 2,000, the Muslim Waqf refused permission for any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then it removed 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount and deposited it into the garbage; that rubble included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods. For details see here.
A report in 2012 stated that the Muslim Waqf was continuing to destroy Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount.
As Dr. Gabriel Barkay, professor emeritus from Bar-Ilan University and recipient of the 1996 Jerusalem Prize for Archeological Research, stated last October, “Temple denial started in the 1990s, even though the Islamic Wakf itself in the 1920s and ’30s issued booklets which were given to visitors of the Temple Mount in which they said the existence of the Temples is beyond any doubt. It was accepted and in the Islamic literature through the generations there is a plethora of mentions of Solomon’s Temple and the Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, so it is very strange that they deny it now.”
The Temple Mount was where King Solomon established the Temple; it contained the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant, containing the Ten Commandments and the Torah, was housed. Jews were required to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year. The First Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, but Jews returning from Babylonia rebuilt it in 538 BCE and finished building it in 515 BC. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. To this day, Jews face in the direction of the site of the Temple when they are praying.