There is no ‘status quo’ on the Temple Mount
Unlike many others who fear backlash from Muslim countries, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and many other Israeli Jews, believe the time has come to assert full sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
By Israel Kasnett
JNS
Aug 18, 2024
Nearly three thousand Jews visited the Temple Mount last week on Tuesday, Tisha B’av, which commemorates the destruction of the two ancient Jewish Temples.
But it was the visits to the Temple Mount by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister for the Negev and the Galilee Yitzhak Wasserlauf that set off another firestorm of controversy.
Ben-Gvir said during the visit that the status quo had changed and that Jews could now pray at the site.
Critics condemned the visit and remarks as provocative, warning they could derail the currently ongoing hostage talks in Doha, Qatar, or even ignite the Muslim world. They claimed Ben-Gvir violated the status quo on the Mount.
But according to Yehuda Glick, a former Knesset member and currently chairman of the Shalom Jerusalem Foundation, in reality there is no status quo.
“Jews have been praying publicly and regularly on the Temple Mount for the last decade,” he said.
The only difference, he told JNS, was that until now no one acknowledged it or said anything about it. What made Ben-Gvir’s visit different was his official announcement that prayer on the Temple Mount is permitted, he added.
“For the last decade, Jews have been praying publicly on the Temple Mount every day with the permission of the police,” said Glick.
The central understanding today regarding the site involves the terms agreed upon between Israel and the Islamic Waqf when Israel conquered the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount during the 1967 Six-Day War. These became known as “the status quo.”
While officially Israel denies any changes have been made to the status quo, it no longer exists as formulated by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in 1967.
According to Glick, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is paying lip service to it, “but is totally supportive of the changes that are happening.”
According to a statement issued by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday in the wake of Ben-Gvir’s visit and statement, “It is the Government and the Prime Minister who determine policy on the Temple Mount. There is no private policy of any minister—not the National Security Minister or any other minister—on the Temple Mount.
“This morning’s incident on the Temple Mount deviated from the status quo. Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount has not changed; this is how it has been and this is how it will be.”
Ben-Gvir’s office pushed back, stating that as national security minister, he could set policy on the Mount and had determined that Jews could pray there.
“The policy of the national security minister is to allow freedom of worship for Jews everywhere, including the Temple Mount, and Jews will continue to do so in the future as well,” read the statement.
“The Temple Mount is a sovereign area in the capital of the State of Israel,” it continued. “There is no law that allows racial discrimination against Jews on the Temple Mount, or anywhere else in Israel,” it concluded.
After the 1967 war, the government handed day-to-day control of the area to the Muslim Waqf religious authorities, overseen by the Jordanian government, with Israel in charge of security. Jews were allowed to visit the Temple Mount in small numbers, but were forbidden from praying.
Going as far back as the days of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, Arab and Muslim leaders have frequently used the modern blood libel “Al-Aqsa is in danger” to claim that Jews were going up to the Temple Mount to achieve the collapse of the mosques there and build the Third Temple in their stead.
But, as noted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “the calumny that Al-Aqsa is endangered is not only groundless, it is, in fact, precisely on the Temple Mount that the State of Israel made the greatest concession ever by one religion to another when it relinquished the exercise of the Jewish right to prayer at the location and entrusted its management to the Waqf authorities.”
Ben-Gvir aims to change this. Unlike many others who fear backlash from Muslim countries, Ben-Gvir, his followers and many other Israeli Jews believe the time has come to stand up to foreign abuse and to assert full sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
This does not mean discounting the Muslim presence on or importance of the site. Rather, what it means is the application of full and equal rights to all religions with regard to peaceful prayer on the Temple Mount.
But Muslim countries are against allowing Jews to pray on their holiest site, and unfortunately, the United States agrees.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday issued a statement in which he criticized Ben-Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount.
Washington “strongly opposes” Ben-Gvir’s visit “to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount … which demonstrated blatant disregard for the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem,” he said.
“These provocative actions only exacerbate tensions at a pivotal moment when all focus should be on the ongoing diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire agreement and secure the release of all hostages and create the conditions for broader regional stability,” he added.
The United States “reaffirms our commitment to the preservation of the historic status quo and will continue to oppose unilateral steps that are counterproductive to achieving peace and stability and undermine Israel’s security.”
However, that the Temple Mount is a “flashpoint” issue is a falsehood perpetuated by the media in collaboration with the Palestinians, and parroted by the U.S. State Department.
While former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was blamed in 2000 for setting off riots after he ascended the Temple Mount, it was later proven that former P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat had ordered the violence long before the visit.
The idea that freedom of worship applies everywhere except for Jews on the Temple Mount is viewed by many as preposterous and hypocritical—perhaps even antisemitic.
In recent years, there have been accusations among Palestinians and across the Muslim world of a conspiracy by Israel to “Judaize” Jerusalem, particularly the Temple Mount.
Netanyahu has argued against this absurdity.
Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly in 2011, Netanyahu said, “I often hear them accuse Israel of Judaizing Jerusalem. That’s like accusing America of Americanizing Washington or the British of Anglicizing London. Do you know why we’re called ‘Jews’? Because we come from Judea.”
However, Israel’s haredi parties, too, attacked Ben-Gvir for what they said was an unnecessary provocation of the Muslim world. Many Jews, mainly from the haredi sector, but also from the religious-Zionist sector, believe there are two main reasons why it is forbidden for Jews to visit the Temple Mount.
The first has to do with ritual purity. In modern times, Jews are considered to be spiritually “impure” and therefore are forbidden from setting foot on such a holy site.
The second reason is the ancient Jewish edict to refrain from provoking gentiles.
Professor Kimmy Caplan, an expert on haredim at the Koschitzky Dept. of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Bar-Ilan University, told JNS the haredi view on the Temple mount relates mainly to the former.
“The only way to attend this space is by being pure,” he said, “and the only way Jews can be pure is going to be at some later time whenever the Messiah comes, and whenever they build the Temple and there will be a massive purifying ritual which will allow access to the Temple Mount.”
Caplan also noted that there are disagreements with regard to the borders of the Temple Mount and what constitutes the off-limits area. For instance, at least one opinion maintains that the Temple Mount area includes the entire visitor’s plaza in front of the Western Wall.
“The second argument, which a lot of haredi rabbis have adopted, and religious Zionist rabbis less so, and this is something that appears in ancient Jewish sources, is that you’re supposed to live in peace with your non-Jewish neighbors and should not provoke them,” said Caplan.
“This notion has been applied by several haredi rabbis over the decades not only pertaining to the Temple Mount but other issues,” he added. “This has become a legal, halachic legal argument to do or not do certain things; if the result is provoking the gentiles then that is forbidden.”
He emphasized that the rabbis who express opposition to Jews visiting the Temple Mount “are taking a religious stand.”
He acknowledged that the proscription on provoking gentiles stems from the period when Jews were in exile under gentile rule. However, he explained, the crux of the issue is that from the haredi perspective, regardless of the fact that Israel is a sovereign state and regardless of the concept of freedom of worship, the Jewish people is still in exile.
“The fact that we are in the State of Israel does not change the theological approach of being in exile until the Messiah comes,” he said. “That exile has theological and ideological ramifications, and this is one of them.”
While Jewish law can be malleable, for the strictly Orthodox, adherence to tradition is ironclad. Therefore, deviating from the strictures of ritual purity or ignoring the edict forbidding the provoking of gentiles is unthinkable for them.
One of the central figures involved in normalizing Jewish visits to the Temple Mount is long-time activist Rabbi Shimshon Elboim. According to him, the “status quo” on the Temple Mount “is a non-legal definition.”
It “is not something that is legislated in any specific framework,” he noted.
Rather, he said, it is considered “a general procedure that does not make room for dramatic changes. The State of Israel religiously observes this rule.”
For this reason, he said, “there is no date that you can put your finger on in terms of when this rule was reversed.”
“No one decides one day to turn the situation around,” he said. “Rather, everything develops there at the natural pace of the flow of life, including Jewish prayer, which was always permitted by definition, and was prevented due to the activities of the Murabitun and their terrorism on the Temple Mount.”
The Murabitun (and Murabitat) are an Islamist political movement of Muslim women, funded by the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. For years, these groups of women would follow Jewish visitors around the Temple Mount, screaming at them and harassing them with shouts of “Allahu Akbar [God is great].”
Israel finally outlawed these groups, forbidding them to harass Jewish visitors. Since then, Jews have been able to peacefully visit the Temple Mount, without fear.
Elboim told JNS he believes that “the more Jews ascend to the Temple Mount, the greater and faster the rate of development will be.”
He noted that, like Ben-Gvir, Israel’s former public security ministers Gilad Erdan and Amir Ohana were also favorable to allowing Jews the right to freedom of prayer on the site.
“There is freedom of religion where there are religious people who want it,” Elboim said. “For decades, religious Jews did not want to pray on the Temple Mount, except for a very few, so the authorities did not regulate it, preferring to keep skirmishes between those few and the threatening Muslim crowd to a minimum.”
Nowadays, since thousands of Jews visit the site to pray, “the police stopped confronting them,” he said.
“Those who do not maintain the status quo are those who destroyed ancient relics there from the days of the Temple,” he added, referring to the Islamic Waqf.
These are the same people who “closed the Temple Mount to Jews and tourists again and again for different reasons, funded groups to attack Jews and tourists, and did everything in their power to block Jews and other non-Muslims from visiting,” he said.
“Fortunately for us, since 2006 or so, the police have stopped turning a blind eye to their violations, succeeding in preventing them from violating the status quo, and allowing the Jews to visit the area in peace and safety,” he said.
But not everyone agrees that Jews should be given full rights to visit and pray at the site.
Fearing Muslim backlash, security officials allegedly asked Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion to mobilize the religious leadership to convey a clear message on the issue.
He produced a video, with subtitles in Arabic, featuring five senior rabbis, including Israel’s former Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and Rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem Avigdor Nebenzahl, in which they condemned visits by Jews to the Temple Mount.
The former chief rabbi says in the video: “I call on the nations of the world, do not see those government ministers as representing the people of Israel. They do not represent the people of Israel. Most of the Jews in the Land of Israel and in the world do not go up to the Temple Mount. Please act to calm the spirits, we all believe in one God and want peace between the nations, and we must not let extreme fringes lead us.”
President of Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah Rabbi Shmuel Betzalel, a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, Rabbi David Cohen and Rabbi Simcha Rabinowitz also participated in the video.
After Ben-Gvir’s visit to the site last month, Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, of the Shas Party, criticized the national security minister, reminding him that leading rabbis and the Chief Rabbinical Council of Israel have unanimously agreed and decreed that there is a “severe warning that no one should dare enter the Temple Mount area until the arrival of the Messiah.”
Elboim criticized this approach, saying the ultra-Orthodox maintain the edict of not provoking gentiles “because most of them do not live the ethos of Jewish heroism in our generation.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid and ultra-Orthodox Shas Party Chairman Aryeh Deri have discussed jointly promoting a bill that would ban Jews from the Temple Mount.
Knesset member Amit Halevi of Likud criticized Lapid and Deri’s collaborative idea.
“We’re in the middle of a war specifically over the Temple Mount,” Halevi told JNS. “There’s a reason Hamas named its Oct. 7 attack the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood.’”
He noted to JNS that, as declared in the Hamas Charter and by the Iranian mullahs, this is not a war over land but over religion. The Temple Mount stands at the heart of this war.
“This is exactly what Hamas wants and such a law would be nothing less than a prize for the terrorist organization and for the Iranian regime,” Halevi said.
Tom Nisani, CEO of NGO “Beyadenu,” (“In Our Hands”), an Israeli nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about the Temple Mount and its heritage in Jewish communities worldwide, told JNS, “It is exciting to see Jews praying, singing and bowing down on Tisha B’Av on the Temple Mount, according to the law.”
Nisani also noted that more Jews have been visiting the Temple Mount in recent years.
In 2021, just 15,056 visited, while this year, by mid-August alone, 32,237 Jews had already ascended the Temple Mount.
But the controversy surrounding the Jewish right to prayer on the Temple Mount and whether it should be prevented continues to stew.
Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, recently discussed a petition by Beyadenu to determine who has the authority to set police policy on the Temple Mount.
This comes after the amendment to the Police Ordinance in December 2022, which established that the minister of national security sets police policy everywhere, including on the Temple Mount.
According to Nisani, Ben-Gvir has already established a policy document for the Temple Mount, but the demand is that he also establish a more specific policy document regarding the banning of Jews from the site.
The hearing on the petition will continue on Sep. 15.
“This in itself is an important legal achievement,” said Nisani.
“Those who wanted to see an ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ instead received this,” he said. This Hebrew calendar year, he added “over 40,000 Jews” had visited the site, “who strengthen Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount with an overwhelming Jewish response.”
“This is our direction and we will continue to act until we achieve our full rights on the Temple Mount,” he said.
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