Such a move would likely spark widespread outrage among Palestinians, whose predominantly Muslim community has prayed at the Al-Aqsa Mosque since its construction in the 8th century. Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from the Dome of the Rock.
A striking example of how explosive the issue can be came in 2000, after then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon entered the compound surrounded by police and soldiers. The move was widely seen as deliberately provocative and sparked riots in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The ensuing five-year period of violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, known as the Second Intifada or Al-Aqsa, was marked by frequent suicide attacks and intense military operations.
Any attempt to change the site’s religious status quo could be dangerous, according to Mazen Jabari, a Palestinian political consultant and researcher who traces his family’s history in Jerusalem’s Old City going back 600 years and lives near Al Aqsa.
“You play with fire when you want to change the situation inside,” he said. “In Rome, if you go to the Vatican, you buy a ticket and you go in. But I can’t pray inside that place.”
Top: A Muslim man prays in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in April. Bottom: A Jew prays at the Western Wall on June 7. Ahmad Gharabli; Simon Beni/AFP/Getty ImagesIsrael controls security and access to the compound where Muslims have exclusive rights to prayer and religious matters. The site is administered by a Jordan-based religious authority known as the Jerusalem Islamic Waq.
According to Waqf and Glick, more than 70,000 Jewish activists entered the mosque grounds last year. In 2021, 33,000 people visited it, specifies the Waqf.
The growing “incursions” are accompanied by increasing Israeli involvement in the management of services and facilities inside the mosque, the Waqf said in a statement to NBC News.
“The objective is to transfer the center of administrative decision-making related to the management of the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Jordanian Waqf to the Israeli agenda,” the Waqf statement added.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there is no change in policy regarding the status quo of the complex. Members of his government, including The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir – openly defy this policy, frequently visiting Al-Aqsa and bringing Jewish settlers to pray.
During Glick’s tour, NBC News saw a Jewish group openly defying the rules by praying and prostrating themselves outside the compound under police protection. They later unfurled Israeli flags and sang the national anthem on the steps leading to the Dome of the Rock.
“Eternal Gathering Place”Jerry Bowers, who was also in Glick’s touring band, said he would like to see increased access to Al-Aqsa for non-Muslims.
“We believe as Christians that this will be the eternal gathering place of all Christians in the end times, and so it is important to pray for peace, peace for Jerusalem,” said Bowers, a pastor from Brownwood, Texas.
He added that instead of the Jerusalem Waqf, Israel should administer the site “because there will be more freedom” than “what it has been.”
Other groups of tourists wandered the grounds, taking selfies. Only a handful of Muslim worshipers were visible. Israeli authorities regularly limit Palestinian access to the site.
Built on the site of the rock where many Jews, Christians and Muslims believe God spared Abraham’s son Isaac from his father’s knife, the Temple Mount is also the site of two earlier Jewish temples. The first, built during the time of King Solomon around 3,000 years ago, was destroyed in 387 BC by the Babylonians.
Top: an engraving of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem dating from 1705. Bottom: the current Al-Aqsa Mosque complex and the Western Wall.Getty ImagesThe Second Temple was built after a period of Jewish exile, only to be destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans, just decades after Jesus was crucified outside the city walls.
According to Tatarsky, a researcher with the rights group Ir Amim, the idea of a third temple, once considered “crazy,” is becoming increasingly common.
But religious convictions and harsh political reality are once again in turmoil in this ancient place. This year, on Jerusalem Day – a public holiday on May 14 that commemorates the capture of East Jerusalem by Israeli forces in 1967 – Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister, waved an Israeli flag in front of the Dome of the Rock, a video released by his office shows.
Ben-Gvir, who frequently walks the compound to pray with his supporters, then quoted a paratrooper who was part of the Israeli forces that seized Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967: “The Temple Mount is in our hands. »
