JERUSALEM: As police protected them, three Jewish men stepped forward, placed their hands out at chest level and began reciting prayers in low tones in the shadow of Jerusalem’s golden Dome of the Rock.
Jewish prayers at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, were once unthinkable. But they have quietly become the new norm in recent years, flying in the face of longstanding convention, straining a delicate status quo and raising fears that they could trigger a new wave of violence in the Middle East.
“What is happening is a blatant and dangerous violation of the status quo,” said Sheikh Omar Al-Kiswani, a top official with the Waqf, the Jordanian-backed Islamic trust that administers the site. “The Israeli police must stop providing protection to extremists.”
The hilltop compound is the holiest site for Jews, revered as the location of two ancient temples destroyed in antiquity. Three times a day for 2,000 years, Jews have turned to face it during prayers. It also is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.
Israel captured the hilltop, along with the rest of east Jerusalem and the walled Old City, in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it, a move that was not recognized by most of the international community. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as capital of a future independent state.
The flashpoint site is the emotional epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many rounds of deadly fighting in the decades-long conflict have erupted around it. The most recent was in May, when an Israeli police crackdown on stone-throwing Palestinian protesters inside the mosque helped precipitate an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and violent upheaval in Israeli cities.
Since 1967, a loose set of rules known as the “status quo” have governed day-to-day operations at the site. Any actual or perceived changes to the status quo has the potential to ignite violence.
For decades, Jews avoided worship at the site for religious reasons. Many leading rabbis, including the country’s Chief Rabbinate, ruled after the 1967 war that Jews “should not enter the entire area of the Temple Mount” out of concern for ritual impurity and uncertainty over the exact location of the ancient Temple’s holy of holies.
But attitudes are changing, particularly among Israel’s hard-line, religious nationalist right wing.
Amnon Ramon, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Policy Research, said the issue of Jewish prayer has transformed in recent decades “from a matter that was on the fringe to a subject in the mainstream for the religious nationalist public.” Most in that community appears to support some degree of Jewish worship there, as do a growing number of ultra-Orthodox Jews.
New Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who leads a small, hard-line religious party, caused an uproar last month on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B’Av when he said Israel was committed to protecting “freedom of worship” for Jews at the compound. His office quickly issued a clarification stating there was “no change whatsoever” in the status quo.
Rabbi Eliyahu Vebr, head of the Temple Mount Yeshiva, said that for over a year, he has entered the site daily, most of the time with at least 10 Jewish men necessary for a group prayer.
“So long as things are not conspicuous, in a way that disturbs, the police allow it,” he said.
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Jewish prayers held discreetly at contested Jerusalem shrine
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Jewish prayers held discreetly at contested Jerusalem shrine
- ‘What is happening is a blatant and dangerous violation of the status quo’
- The hilltop compound is also home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam
Israeli minister calls West Bank measures ‘de facto sovereignty,’ says no future Palestinian state
- Eli Cohen’s comments on Tuesday suggest these steps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state
- alestinians, Arab countries, and human rights groups view the actions as annexation
RAMALLAH: A top Israeli official said Tuesday that measures adopted by the government that deepen Israeli control in the occupied West Bank amounted to implementing “de facto sovereignty,” using language that mirrors critics’ warnings about the intent behind the moves.
The steps “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio.
Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves announced Sunday an annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.
Cohen’s comments followed similar remarks by other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
The moves — and Israeli officials’ own descriptions of them — put the country at odds with both regional allies and previous statements from US President Donald Trump. Netanyahu has traveled to Washington to meet with him later this week.
Last year, Trump said he won’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that aimed to stop the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
Widespread condemnation
The measures further erode the Palestinian Authority’s limited powers, and it’s unclear the extent to which it can oppose them. Still, Hussein Al Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy president, said on Tuesday “the Palestinian leadership called on all civil and security institutions in the State of Palestine” to reject them
In a post on X on Tuesday, he said the Israeli steps “contradict international law and the agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
A group of eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries expressed their “absolute rejection” of the measures, calling them in a joint statement Monday illegal and warning they would “fuel violence and conflict in the region.”
Israel’s pledge not to annex the West Bank is embedded in its diplomatic agreements with some of those countries and renewed warnings that it was a “red line” for the Emirates led Israel to shelve some high-level discussions on the matter last year.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” by the measures.
“They are driving us further and further away from a two-State solution and from the ability of the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian people to control their own destiny,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday.
What the measures mean
The measures, approved by Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet on Sunday, expand Israel’s enforcement authority over land use and planning in areas run by the Palestinian Authority, making it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land.
Smotrich and Katz on Sunday said they would lift long-standing restrictions on land sales to Israeli Jews in the West Bank, shift some control over sensitive holy sites — including Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs — and declassify land registry records to ease property acquisitions.
They also revive a government committee empowered to make what officials described as “proactive” land purchases in the territory, a step intended to reserve land for future settlement expansion.
Taken together, the moves add an official stamp to Israel’s accelerating expansion and would override parts of decades-old agreements that split the West Bank between areas under Israeli control and areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy.
Israel has increasingly legalized settler outposts built on land Palestinians say documents show they have long owned, evicted Palestinian communities from areas declared “military zones” and villages near archaeological sites it has reclassified as “national parks.”
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians are not permitted to sell land privately to Israelis. Settlers can buy homes on land controlled by Israel’s government.
The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
“These decisions constitute a direct violation of the international agreements to which Israel is committed and are steps toward the annexation of Areas A and B,” anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now said on Sunday, referring to parts of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority exercised some autonomy.
The steps “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio.
Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves announced Sunday an annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.
Cohen’s comments followed similar remarks by other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
The moves — and Israeli officials’ own descriptions of them — put the country at odds with both regional allies and previous statements from US President Donald Trump. Netanyahu has traveled to Washington to meet with him later this week.
Last year, Trump said he won’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that aimed to stop the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
Widespread condemnation
The measures further erode the Palestinian Authority’s limited powers, and it’s unclear the extent to which it can oppose them. Still, Hussein Al Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy president, said on Tuesday “the Palestinian leadership called on all civil and security institutions in the State of Palestine” to reject them
In a post on X on Tuesday, he said the Israeli steps “contradict international law and the agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
A group of eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries expressed their “absolute rejection” of the measures, calling them in a joint statement Monday illegal and warning they would “fuel violence and conflict in the region.”
Israel’s pledge not to annex the West Bank is embedded in its diplomatic agreements with some of those countries and renewed warnings that it was a “red line” for the Emirates led Israel to shelve some high-level discussions on the matter last year.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” by the measures.
“They are driving us further and further away from a two-State solution and from the ability of the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian people to control their own destiny,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday.
What the measures mean
The measures, approved by Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet on Sunday, expand Israel’s enforcement authority over land use and planning in areas run by the Palestinian Authority, making it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land.
Smotrich and Katz on Sunday said they would lift long-standing restrictions on land sales to Israeli Jews in the West Bank, shift some control over sensitive holy sites — including Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs — and declassify land registry records to ease property acquisitions.
They also revive a government committee empowered to make what officials described as “proactive” land purchases in the territory, a step intended to reserve land for future settlement expansion.
Taken together, the moves add an official stamp to Israel’s accelerating expansion and would override parts of decades-old agreements that split the West Bank between areas under Israeli control and areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy.
Israel has increasingly legalized settler outposts built on land Palestinians say documents show they have long owned, evicted Palestinian communities from areas declared “military zones” and villages near archaeological sites it has reclassified as “national parks.”
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians are not permitted to sell land privately to Israelis. Settlers can buy homes on land controlled by Israel’s government.
The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
“These decisions constitute a direct violation of the international agreements to which Israel is committed and are steps toward the annexation of Areas A and B,” anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now said on Sunday, referring to parts of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority exercised some autonomy.
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