Ben Gvir declares Jewish prayer permitted on Temple Mount, again defying status quo
PM’s office pushes back against far-right minister, insists current situation in which Jews are banned from praying at holy site ‘has not changed and will not change’
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Wednesday claimed a major change has been instituted to the fragile status quo on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, saying he prays at the site and that Jewish prayer is allowed at the site, despite a decades-long ban on the practice.
“I was at the Temple Mount last week. I prayed at the Temple Mount and we are praying at the Temple Mount. I am in the political echelon, and the political echelon allows Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount,” Ben Gvir told attendees at a Knesset conference encouraging Jewish visits to the holy site.
He made the statement hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s was to speak to a joint session of Congress on a high-stakes trip during which Netanyahu will meet with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee former president Donald Trump.
It was the second time in as many months that Ben Gvir, challenging Netanyahu, said it was official policy to allow Jews to pray at the site, after he made similar claims in June.
As in the case of those comments, Netanyahu’s office quickly countered Ben Gvir’s assertion, releasing a statement declaring that Israel’s policy “to maintain the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed and will not change.”
In a subsequent statement, Ben Gvir said that allowing Jews to pray on the Mount had been his position for months and insisted that on his watch “there will not be racist discrimination against Jews, who alone are forbidden from praying… in the holiest place for the Jewish people.”
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City is the holiest place in Judaism, as the site of the two biblical temples. Known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, it is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
The vague status quo governing the compound allows Muslims to pray and enter with few restrictions, while non-Muslims, including Jews, can visit only during limited time slots via a single gate, with visibly religious Jews only allowed to walk on a predetermined route, closely accompanied by police. While Jews are not officially allowed to pray, police have increasingly tolerated limited, quiet prayer.
The Temple Mount has been the scene of frequent clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces, and tensions at the disputed compound have fueled past rounds of violence.
Palestinians often claim Israel wishes to assert greater control over the Mount, and the issue is seen as a particularly sensitive one, with explosive potential for the region.
In a video published by the Walla news site Wednesday, Chief Superintendent Eyal Avraham, commander of Israel Police’s Holy Sites Unit, stated: “We do not allow [Jewish] prayer at the Temple Mount.”
Ben Gvir’s comments also elicited strong criticism from ultra-Orthodox lawmakers who believe that ascending to the Temple Mount violates Jewish law.
“The great blasphemy that has been committed cannot pass quietly,” Interior Minister Moshe Arbel (Shas) told the Knesset. Senior United Torah Judaism lawmaker Moshe Gafni tweeted a demand that the prime minister either preserve the status quo or “close the Temple Mount to Jews.”
The Orthodox Chief Rabbinate maintains that due to the destroyed Jewish Temples’ Holy of Holies being located on the Temple Mount, Jewish people should not enter the compound at all — while many Palestinians and Muslims reject the very notion that the Mount is holy to Jews at all.
Try and try again
Speaking with Radio Galei Israel on Jerusalem Day last month, the leader of the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party said that as far as he was concerned, Jewish prayer was now allowed on the Temple Mount.
“That’s the ministerial position and Jews pray on the Temple Mount and that’s a good thing,” he declared, prompting Netanyahu to issue a statement nearly identical to the one released Wednesday.
Ben Gvir is an ardent proponent of greater Jewish access to the Temple Mount and has made several visits to the site during his tenure as ministerA video posted to X in May showed Jewish members of his entourage praying during a visit, which many saw as inflammatory.
A holy backdrop
During his most recent visit, which he referred to in his remarks on Wednesday morning, Ben Gvir called on Netanyahu “not to fold” on a hostage deal with Hamas.
Speaking in a video with the Dome of the Rock behind him, the far-right minister said he had come “to the most important place for the State of Israel, for the Jewish people, to pray for the hostages to return home — but without a reckless deal, without surrender.”
“I am praying and am also working hard so that the prime minister will have the strength not to fold and to go on to victory: to add military pressure, to stop fuel [from entering Gaza] — to win,” he declared.
This was not the first time that Ben Gvir has delivered a political message from the Temple Mount. In May he released a video filmed at the holy site expressing opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
A ‘pyromaniac’
Several hours after Ben Gvir’s comments on Wednesday morning, as his exclusion from a proposed high-level security forum exacerbated an ongoing feud with the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that the minister posed a danger to Israel and the wider region and that he must not be allowed to influence the course of the war.
“There is a pyromaniac sitting in the Israeli government who is trying to set fire to the Middle East,” he tweeted. “I oppose any negotiations to put him in the war cabinet. This will allow him to realize his plans.”
While Netanyahu disbanded the war cabinet when the National Unity party withdrew from the government in June, Ben Gvir has repeatedly held up Shas-backed legislation in an attempt to force the prime minister to appoint him to a similar body that will steer the war.
In a statement on Telegram, former war cabinet minister Benny Gantz declared that “just as Ben Gvir did not decide on the number of [worshipers] entering the Temple Mount during the month of Ramadan, so too he is not deciding on this issue either.”
Earlier this year Netanyahu overruled Ben Gvir’s attempt to restrict the number of worshipers allowed to pray on the Temple Mount in the first week of Ramadan.
“Instead of holding discussions on his inclusion in the narrow security decision-making forum, he should be stripped of all decision-making authority on sensitive security issues,” Gantz said — praising Shas leader Aryeh Deri for reportedly blocking Ben Gvir’s appointment to the body.
Israel launched Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021 in response
to Hamas rocket fire launched after Israel declined an ultimatum to
withdraw from the holy site — and Hamas has named its October 7, 2023,
attack, in which the terror group stormed southern Israel to kill nearly
1,200 people and abduct 251, the Al Aqsa Flood.
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