On the Temple Mount, Israel Has to Keep Making Its Case

On the Temple Mount, the issue is clear, or should be. One side – that of Israel — wishes to allow religious freedom for both Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest site for Muslims. The Muslims, however, wish to continue to prevent Jewish visitors from praying on the Mount, and to keep strict limits on visiting hours by Jews to four hours a day, and only on five days a week, while there are no limits on when Muslims may visit. A reflection on this situation can be found here:

In a fully rational world, it should be obvious to any observer who honestly seeks moral clarity, that at a religious site sacred to multiple religions, the side that seeks to visit and pray in peace and also allows full religious freedom to the other is in the right — and the side that reacts with violence and seeks to bar the other from prayer is in the wrong.

But in the real world’s cacophony of noise and ethical confusion, it is clear that Israel needs to forcefully, clearly, and, most importantly, publicly articulate its position to the world.

The failure to do so allows bigots and those seeking to harness bigotry to demonize Israel, arouse violence, inflame antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, and work to derail Israel’s budding diplomacy with its Arab neighbors. To prevail, Israel’s message must be clear: The Jewish people’s ties to the Temple Mount are an undeniable historical fact. Israel wants peace, tolerance, and religious freedom, while those who stash rocks, pipes, bottles, and weapons and engage in violent rioting are the ones who are truly desecrating the site.

Jewish ties to the Temple Mount go back at least to 986 B.C., when King David conquered the city. Muslim ties to the Temple Mount began more than 1600 years later, in the seventh century, when Arabs first arrived from Arabia. When the Jordanians – Muslim Arabs — controlled the Old City from 1949 to 1967, Jews were prevented either from visiting the Temple Mount, or even from praying at the Western Wall. When Israel came into possession of East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, in the Six-Day War, instead of behaving toward the Muslims as they had behaved toward the Jews, the Muslims were guaranteed freedom of access to the Temple Mount, and the right to pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque and on the Mosque compound, without any limits. Instead, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan by himself decided that he would impose a prohibition on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and, furthermore, he would limit Jewish prayers to four hours a day. This was intended to mollify the Arabs. In fact, nothing mollifies the Muslim Arabs when it comes to the Temple Mount; they complain constantly of Jewish “aggression,” while it is they who attack Jewish visitors to the Mount with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails.

Since Islam’s conquest of Jerusalem in the seventh century CE, the mosque that they built on the site of the Jewish Holy of Holies has become a Muslim holy site. Therefore, this site has been holy to Muslims for well over a millennium. No one is seeking to undermine this. However, it is also equally undeniable that the site has been holy to the Jewish people for centuries [at least 16 centuries] before Islam ever existed, and that the Jewish people never abandoned this belief. Therefore, every discussion to follow must be based upon the solid understanding that the site is indeed holy to both Muslims and Jews.

The argument that Israel wants to take sole control over this or other holy sites is thoroughly disingenuous, and has cynically been used for political purposes, with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Arab leaders inciting violence and hatred over peaceful Jewish worship. Their rhetoric utilizes blatant religious bigotry clearly aimed at incitement.

Israel has no intention of taking “sole control” over the Temple Mount. It has never interfered with Jordanian control of the Islamic Waqf that manages the Islamic holy sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It is the Palestinians who are guilty of what they accuse Israel of doing – that is, asserting their right to sole control over the Mount.

For instance, in a 2015 speech, the ostensibly moderate PA leader Mahmoud Abbas proclaimed: “The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours … and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem … We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr [Shahid] will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah.

Needless to say, the Israelis have not “defiled” the Al-Aqsa Mosque with “their filthy feet.” The real desecration of the Mosque is that by the Muslims themselves, when they use that religious site as a storehouse for weapons, and also as a place from which Muslims emerge to attack Jewish visitors to the site, and to throw rocks and bottles on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall far below. Then those Muslim attackers rush back into the Mosque for safety. Very occasionally the Israeli police have entered the Mosque in hot pursuit of those who were attacking Jews; that is what Mahmoud Abbas is referring to when he says that “they [the Jews] have no right to defile it [the Al-Aqsa Mosque] with their filthy feet.” But it’s perfectly fine for the Muslims to turn Al-Aqsa into a weapons storehouse and hideout for terrorists.