Described as ‘the most contested piece of real estate on earth’, Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, known as Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) to Muslims and Temple Mount to Jews, is today the epicenter of Israeli-Palestinian tensions.

Many aspects of the site’s history, religious significance, and socio-political status long precede Israel’s inception and are closely entwined with the overall historical status quo of the Old City of Jerusalem itself.

In 1917, having defeated the Ottoman Empire, the British army seized control of Jerusalem. Upon arrival at the Old City’s Jaffa Gate, General Allenby dismounted his horse and entered on foot in what was then understood as a show of respect to the ancient site. It signaled that the British authorities intended to maintain the status quo upheld by the Ottomans in the city for four hundred years.

Under the Ottoman Turks, Jerusalem’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews in their separate quarters coexisted in relative harmony, with edicts granting the various religious groups shared rights in the holy places, demarcating areas of control and establishing time schedules in areas shared by more than one religion. This came to be known as the ‘status quo’.

“Key to the success of this arrangement was the lack of a single sovereign entity or a power hierarchy prioritizing one group’s religious needs over others, and this is precisely what would gradually change in the coming decades”

The status quo acquired additional legitimacy by being included in the 1856 Paris Peace Convention Treaty, the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty, and the British Mandate government’s 1922 Palestine Order-in-Councils.

Key to the success of this arrangement was the lack of a single sovereign entity or a power hierarchy prioritizing one group’s religious needs over others, and this is precisely what would gradually change in the coming decades.

Facilitated by the British authorities in the 1920s and 1930s, Jerusalem saw an influx of European Jewish settlers, which aroused fear in the local Palestinians of a Jewish takeover of the Holy City. Clashes and riots between Palestinians and Jewish settlers were inevitable.

In 1947 the UN adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, which set to divide the country into Arab and Jewish states. It assigned an international status (corpus separatum) to Jerusalem with the intention to retain the city’s status quo.

In 1948, Israel was established and Palestinians were dispossessed and displaced. This saw the Israeli state seize the western part of Jerusalem. The Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement of 1949 formalised the de facto division of the city into an eastern sector, including Haram Al-Sharif, controlled by Jordan, and a western sector controlled by Israel.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in June 1967, and within days it demolished the 800-year-old Arab Muslim quarter of Al-Maghraba (Moroccan quarter) and expelled its residents to provide increased access for Jews to the Western Wall. Although Muslims still claim the land as waqf (Islamic religious property), the area now is a hub for religious and ultra-nationalist Jews.

The adjacent Haram Al-Sharif was initially spared direct Israeli control, fearing such a step would ignite the region and bring about sharp international criticism. The Israeli occupation allowed the Islamic waqf, mainly supervised and funded by the Jordanian government, to continue to administer the Muslim site.

This, in theory, is what stands today. But the events on the ground suggest that Israel’s alleged commitment to the Muslim site’s status quo has been dangerously eroded.

The incremental takeover of Al-Aqsa

The 35-acre compound of Haram al-Sharif has been under Muslim rule for nearly 14 centuries and houses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.

For Jews, the same area is believed to be the site of the destroyed First and Second Temples (586 BC and 70 CE respectively). However, independent scientific verification is scarce, as Jewish claims are solely biblical and no significant archaeological remains have been found to support them.

Soon after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it claimed it had no wish to change the situation in the Old City. The country’s Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis issued a Halachic decree forbidding the entry of Jews into the Al-Aqsa compound on the grounds it was deemed a violation of Jewish religious law.

The decree was approved by even fundamentalist Rabbi Zvi Yehud Kook, a key leader of religious Zionism whose followers represent the core of religious settlers in the occupied West Bank today.

“Over the next decades, it would become clear that the initial religious decree to ban Jewish entrance into Haram Al-Sharif and Israeli governments’ commitment to the legal status quo were not upheld”
For Palestinians, the signs were ominous from day one. Demolishing the Moroccan quarter soon after the occupation was, effectively, an encroachment upon the status quo. This was immediately followed by the Israeli Border Police taking control of a building near the Compound’s northern wall, turning it into a permanent Israeli police headquarters. Protecting Haram Al-Sharif from Jewish violations was the pretext.

Yet, in 1969 a fundamentalist Australian Jew, Denis Michael Rohan, managed to enter Al-Aqsa Mosque and started a fire in the building. With mostly buckets of water, Palestinian Muslims and Christians rushed to put out the fire, only to be obstructed by the Israeli authorities, leaving the fire to rage for hours. The ancient mosque suffered significant damage.

Over the next decades, it would become clear that the initial religious decree to ban Jewish entrance into Haram Al-Sharif and Israeli governments’ commitment to the legal status quo were not upheld. This would be confirmed by Israel’s 1980 unilateral and illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.

The annexation provided the Israeli authorities with the legal tools to gradually create facts on the ground in the compound with the hope of diminishing the Jordanian custodianship over the site, weakening Palestinians’ attachment to it and eventually establishing a permanent Jewish presence there.

Dismantling the Dome of the Rock and building the temple on its ruins continues to be the goal of some Jewish far-right groups. Between 1967 and 2000, dozens of Israeli incursions by religious Jewish fanatics occurred, trying to lay the so-called Temple cornerstone at Al-Aqsa. Several excavations were also carried out under the compound.

Each time, Palestinians protesting these incursions were met with violence by Israeli police.

In April 1982, the Israeli security opened fire within the Dome of the Rock, killing and injuring six Palestinians and causing physical damage to the building. A raid inside the Compound in October 1990 led to the death of nineteen Palestinians. In 1996, widespread protests erupted following Israel’s opening of a tunnel under Al-Aqsa. Over 100 Palestinians were killed and a thousand others injured by Israeli forces.

“Marking the so-called ‘Jerusalem Day’ this year, Haram Al-Sharif saw a record number of settler incursions under unprecedentedly heavy police protection”
Staring into the abyss

The watershed moment came in 2000 with former PM Ariel Sharon’s ‘visit’ to Haram Al-Sharif, surrounded by over a thousand security personnel. The visit, which ignited the Second Intifada, opened the door to more intensive and organized incursions into the compound.

On security grounds allegedly in response to the Intifada, Israel revoked the waqf’s administration of visits by non-Muslims.

Before 2003, the Israeli government allowed a maximum of three religious Jews to visit the site at the same time. From 2017 onwards, the incursions became a daily routine, normally carried out between 7.30am and 10.30am, and again between 1pm and 2pm under police protection. Dozens of settlers join each tour, with the number rising to hundreds on Jewish holidays, such as Passover, Purim, and Jerusalem Day.

In 2009, the number of settlers raiding Haram Al-Sharif reached 5,000. It rose to 15,000 in 2016, then 25,000 in 2017, and 30,000 in 2019. In the first three months of this year, the raids saw a 35% surge compared to the year prior.

Marking the so-called ‘Jerusalem Day’ this year, Haram Al-Sharif saw a record number of settler incursions under unprecedentedly heavy police protection. Some 2,600 Jews stormed the Muslim holy site.

Simultaneously, Palestinians were banned from entering the compound and were met not only by police brutality but also by settler violence at Al-Aqsa gates and across the Old City, including the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

Imam and Director of Al-Aqsa, Sheikh Omar Kiswani, said that the Jerusalem Day incursions this year were the most dangerous since Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and that the Israeli authorities have been planning to move the battle to the inside of Haram Al-Sharif. “In so doing, the occupation aims to ignite a religious war,” Kiswani warned.

Similarly, Jerusalem’s PA-appointed governor, Adnan Gheith, told Al Jazeera Arabic that the final goal of the Bennett government is starting a regional religious war.

In a fiery speech last month commemorating the Gaza war’s first anniversary, Hamas leader Yehiyah Sinwar warned that Al-Aqsa Mosque is a red line and that what happened during Ramadan, when the Israeli troops stormed the mosque and attacked the worshippers, could be a prelude for a widespread religious war.

Pointing at a large poster behind him showing Israeli troops inside the mosque in full gear, Sinwar threatened that, “The Sword of Jerusalem (a reference to the Gaza battle) remains unsheathed, and [the resistance] will never allow [the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque] to happen again”.

Palestinians believe that reframing their anti-colonial struggle in religious terms would ultimately play into Israel’s hands. Israel actively promotes the idea that Jews, represented by Israel, and Christians, represented by ‘the West’, are in a global struggle against ‘radical Islam’. A religious war can be endless, and that suits Israel perfectly.

Meanwhile, a political struggle has an end, and this framing is at odds with Israel’s final goal of a complete takeover of Palestinian land. What is more, in a religious war, the illegality of the occupation and international law becomes irrelevant.

“All evidence suggests that what is coming is further escalation, and more intensive campaigns to change the status quo at Haram al-Sharif, for without the compound, Israel’s ‘sovereignty’ over East Jerusalem remains incomplete”
To protect Haram Al-Sharif, Palestinians have, among other things, organized what is known as Murabiteen, a social and religious sit-in where worshippers form a permanent presence in the mosque to prevent the settlers from taking over.

The Murabiteen, however, have been routinely targeted by the Israeli authorities, either through physical abuse, arrest, or temporary banishment from the Compound.

With the dramatic increase in the number of raids on the Compound and police brutality, this time directly supported and facilitated by Israel’s far-right government, protecting the Muslim holy site has become extremely challenging.

To Palestinian-Israeli Knesset member (MK) Sami Abu Shihadeh, what is happening in Jerusalem reflects a fast and dangerous deterioration of the majority of the Jewish population toward fascism.

Celebrating the occupation of another people, a reference to the Jerusalem Day’s flag parade, is a sure sign of a society-wide moral decline, MK Ahmed Tibi commented. Whether there is indeed a decline toward fascism remains a subject of debate; what is certain is that Israeli society has been marching steadily towards the far-right.

All evidence suggests that what is coming is further escalation, and more intensive campaigns to change the status quo at Haram al-Sharif, for without the compound, Israel’s ‘sovereignty’ over East Jerusalem remains incomplete.

Only further violence, more Palestinian dispossession, and the increased intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be the result.

Dr Emad Moussa is a researcher and writer who specializes in the politics and political psychology of Palestine/Israel.

Follow him on Twitter: @emadmoussa

Source: https://english.alaraby.co.uk/analysis/why-al-aqsa-epicentre-israels-occupation

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More than a dozen tear gas canisters and stun grenades landed in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, as police and protesters faced off inside the walled compound that surrounds it, said an Associated Press photographer at the scene. Smoke rose in front of the mosque and the iconic golden-domed shrine on the site, and rocks littered the nearby plaza. Inside one area of the compound, shoes and debris lay scattered over ornate carpets.

Palestinians clash with Israeli security forces at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.CREDIT: AP

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“This is a terrible desecration of the sanctity of the place, especially when it is performed in the Dome of the Rock plaza, the site of the Jewish Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount,” an Israeli organization said.

Several clips recently posted on social media sites showing Muslims playing ball games on the Temple Mount have prompted an Israeli organization to demand the prosecution of the offenders and the transfer of control of the holy site from the Muslim Waqf to a Jewish authority.

The shocking videos featuring Muslims desecrating the holy site with soccer games, with the ball landing at times right near the Dome of the Rock, and parkour pranks, “evoke deep horror in the heart of every Jew,” the Temple Mount Organizations Administration stated Wednesday.

“This is a terrible desecration of the sanctity of the place, especially when it is performed in the Dome of the Rock plaza, the site of the Jewish Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount,” the organization said.

Following the publication of the videos, they appealed to the police and demanded the arrest of the offenders and their prosecution in accordance with the law.

Assaf Fried, spokesman for the organization, stated that “the despicable behavior of the Muslims on the Temple Mount proves that beyond the mosque next to it, the Temple Mount is not sacred to Arabs, except the sanctity of robbing it from the Jews.”

“It is obligatory to immediately remove the Waqf from the Temple Mount, and hand over the responsibility for the holy place to a Jewish body, for which the sanctity of the Temple Mount is important,” he said.

The Temple Mount Organizations Administration noted that according to High Court rulings, soccer games are banned on the Temple Mount.

The organization said that these clips also prove the importance of the Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. While Jews are on the Temple Mount, the police invest efforts to prevent soccer games there, so as not to hurt the feelings of the Jews.

Now it has become apparent that when Jews are not there, the Muslims do not maintain the sanctity of the place, and film videos that “injure every Jewish heart,” it said.

“And if this is the equation, then it is another reason to open the Temple Mount to Jews around the clock, all days of the week,” they said.

Jewish visits to the Temple Mount are currently limited in time and numbers.

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Anyone seeking to address the Turkish presence in Jerusalem must begin with the Temple Mount, which is the payload that Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his representatives in various Turkish nonprofit groups are trying to drop on Jerusalem. Erdoğan’s man on the Mount and in east Jerusalem is Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, a former mufti of Jerusalem. Sabri identifies both with Turkey and with the outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement and its leader Sheikh Raed Salah. The Turks and the Northern Branch are Jordan’s biggest rivals for Muslim hegemony in Jerusalem and over its holy sites. In light of this, Israel has and will continue to find that it and Jordan have a common interest in keeping Turkey from acquiring more and more influence in the city.

Tens of millions of dollars have been funneled from Turkey to mosques, religious organizations, and dozens of projects in and around the Old City and the Temple Mount in recent years. Turkey supplied the funds to refurbish the Muslim cemetery on the eastern slope of the Temple Mount, to replace the crescent at the top of the Dome of the Rock, to rebuild a storehouse of Ottoman documents on the Mount, to fund excavations to save the Street of the Chain, and dozens of other religious and community projects in the east of the city.

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The problem with these seemingly innocent projects is that there is generally no legal way to prove that they comprise a civil base for violence, incitement, and terrorist activity. Only when there is direct evidence that the civil activity serves violent or terrorist purposes can defense and security authorities – the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency – take action. Evidence of links like that has been found when it comes to Hamas, Shabab Al-Aqsa, or the Northern Branch of the Islamic movement. In those cases, courts ruled that civil infrastructure was feeding terrorist activity and ruled to curtail it for that reason.

This is why a new plan from Foreign Minister Israel Katz should be seen more like a declaration of intent and less as an operational plan. For the plan to take effect, defense and security officials who have been dealing with the issue for several years already must supply the top political echelon with evidence. Anyone who wants, for example, to limit the activity of TIKA, a well-endowed Turkish government agency, in Jerusalem will have to first prove that its activity goes beyond the bounds of civil/community service and slides into violence and incitement. Thus far, no evidence of that has been found, although attempts have been made to do so.

The steps the Foreign Ministry wants to take against the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood organization could also turn out to be complicated. It’s doubtful whether Israel can point to direct activity by the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, it is definitely possible to identify violent activity by groups or individuals with ideological links to the Brotherhood or its international headquarters in London. Steps have been taken against the Muslim Brotherhood in the past, and we can assume that more will be done in the future. Only recently, two female rioters were barred from the Temple Mount for a period of six months.

It looks like the best way to fight Erdoğan, who is hostile to Israel and trying to buy influence in Jerusalem, is to continue to expose Turkey’s ties to Hamas. For years, Turkey has served as a haven for Hamas terrorists and commanders. For years, terrorist attacks or attempted terrorist attacks on both sides of the Green Line have been initiated and directed from Turkish territory. Erdoğan has repeatedly made it clear that as far as he is concerned, Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but the facts on the ground prove differently. Dozens of Hamas cells handled from Turkey have been exposed over the past few years, and the Shin Bet recently reported, “Turkey contributes to the military empowerment of Hamas, through methods that include the SADAT company, which was founded on the orders of Adnan Basha, a close adviser to government officials in Turkey.”

This is where Israel has to operate, both operationally and in terms of public diplomacy and traditional diplomacy. The Turkish nonprofits active in Jerusalem are tough to check unless legislative changes can be made that alter the definition of “hostile” activity in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/how-to-get-erdogan-off-the-temple-mount/

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JERUSALEM — Muslim worshipers clashed with Israeli police in Jerusalem’s Old City Sunday, a holy day on the religious calendar for both the Jewish and Islamic faiths.

Israeli authorities said that tens of thousands flooded the holy site to participate in prayers marking the beginning of Eid al-Adha, with clashes breaking out after protesters began crowding around the only gate where non-Muslims can enter the compound.

Police said Muslim worshippers started throwing stones and chairs at officers who were guarding the entrance to the site, which Muslims refer to as the Noble Sanctuary and Jews refer to as the Temple Mount.

Police fired tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets in response.

Some 37 Muslims were injured in the clashes, according to the Red Crescent. Israeli authorities said four officers were lightly injured in the skirmishes.

Palestinian Muslims shout anti-occupation slogans as they protest against the entry of Jewish worshippers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on Sunday. AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP – Getty Images

Rumours had swirled that some Jewish visitors would be allowed to enter to mark the day of mourning for the destruction of the two Jewish temples that stood there in antiquity.

Israeli authorities can decide to bar entry to Jewish visitors on Muslim holidays if they feel it will stoke tensions. Police had initially prohibited them from entering the complex but later reversed the decision after the clashes broke out.

Jewish visitors streamed through the gate under close police escort, triggering further skirmishes, according to a guard at the compound who spoke to NBC News. The Jewish visitors left the compound shortly after, according to the Associated Press.

Hanan Ashrawi, a veteran Palestinian politician, accused Israel of provoking religious and political tension.

“The storming of al-Aqsa mosque compound by Israeli occupation forces this Eid morning is an act of recklessness and aggression,” she said in a statement.

The contested complex in central Jerusalem is the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest for Islam after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

For Muslims, the 37-acre esplanade is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Islamic Dome of the Rock shrine. For Jews, its status as their religion’s holiest site is tied to its history as the site of First and Second Temples.

Conflicts over the area have triggered confrontations for centuries.

Nowadays Israel provides security for the compound while neighboring Jordan manages the ceremonial and religious aspects of the complex.

Jordan issued a statement condemning what it described as “blatant Israeli violations” against Al-Aqsa mosque and said it had sent a formal complaint to Israel.

“The Israeli government bears full responsibility for the resulting violence and high tension,” said Sufian al-Qudah, a spokesman for the Jordanian Foreign Ministry.

Jewish visitors are not permitted to pray at the site under a longstanding arrangement between Israel and Muslim authorities. Jewish tradition also maintains that Jews should not enter the site and Jews pray instead outside at the Western or Wailing Wall.

In recent years, however, Israeli religious nationalists have encouraged Jews to pray inside the site, challenging the delicate status quo.

Palestinians view this as a provocation and are concerned that Jews mean to seize control or partition the complex. The Israeli government has repeatedly said it has no intention of changing the current arrangement.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/muslim-worshippers-clash-israeli-police-jerusalem-holy-site-n1041161

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This ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy. This ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

The iconic golden dome of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque, located on the Temple Mount or Haram el-Sharif, is the third holiest site in Islam and is recognized throughout the world as a symbol of the city of Jerusalem. Yet, this ancient site that dates back to the year 705 C.E. is being targeted for destruction by increasingly influential extremist groups that seek to erase Jerusalem’s Muslim heritage in pursuit of colonial ambitions and the fulfillment of end-times prophecy.

Some observers may have noticed the growing effort by some Israeli government and religious officials to remove the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque from the Jerusalem skyline, not only erasing the holy site in official posters, banners, and educational material but also physically removing the building itself. For instance, current Knesset member of the ruling Likud Party, American-born Yehuda Glick, was also the director of the government-funded Temple Institute, which has created relics and detailed architectural plans for a temple that they hope will soon replace Al-Aqsa. Glick is also close friends with Yehuda Etzion, who was part of a failed plot in 1984 to blow up Al-Aqsa mosque and served prison time as a result.

“In the end, we’ll build the temple and it will be a house of prayer for all nations,” Glick told Israeli newspaper Maariv in 2012. A year later, Israel’s Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel stated that “[w]e’ve built many little, little temples…but we need to build a real Temple on the Temple Mount.” Ariel stated that the new Jewish Temple must be built on the site where Al-Aqsa currently sits “as it is at the forefront of Jewish salvation.” Since then, prominent Israeli politicians have become more and more overt in their support for the end of Jordanian-Palestinian sovereignty over the mosque compound, leading many prominent Palestinians to warn in recent years of plans to destroy the mosque.

In recent years, a centuries-old effort by what was once a small group of extremists has gone increasingly mainstream in Israel, with prominent politicians, religious figures and political parties advocating for the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque in order to fulfill a specific interpretation of an end-times prophecy that was once considered fringe among practitioners of Judaism.

As Miko Peled, Israeli author and human-rights activist, told MintPress, the movement to destroy Al-Aqsa and replace it with a reimagined Temple “became notable after the 1967 war,” and has since grown into “a massive colonial project that uses religious, biblical mythology and symbols to justify its actions” — a project now garnering support from both religious and secular Israelis.

While the push to destroy Al-Aqsa and replace it with a physical Third Temple has gained traction in Israel in recent years, this effort has advanced at a remarkably fast pace in just the past few weeks, owing to a confluence of factors. These factors, as this report will show, include the upcoming revelation of the so-called “Deal of the Century,” the push for a war with Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and the Trump administration’s dramatic lenience in regards to the activity of Jewish extremist groups and extremist settlements in Israel.

These factors correlate with a quickening of efforts to destroy Al-Aqsa and the very real danger the centuries-old holy site faces. While the U.S. press has occasionally mentioned the role of religious extremism in dictating the foreign policy of prominent U.S. politicians like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, it has rarely shone a light on the role of Jewish extremism in directing Israel’s foreign policy — foreign policy that, in turn, is well-known to influence American policies.

When taken together, the threats to Al-Aqsa are clearly revealed to be much greater than the loss of a physical building, though that itself would be a grave loss for the world’s Muslim community, which includes over 1.8 billion people. In addition, the site’s destruction would very likely result in a regional and perhaps even global war with clear religious dimensions.

To prevent such an outcome, it is essential to highlight the role that extremist, apocalyptic interpretations of both the Jewish and Christian faiths are playing in trends that, if left unchecked, could have truly terrifying consequences. Both of these extremist groups are heavily influenced by colonial ambitions that often supersede their religious underpinning.

In Part I of this two-part series, MintPress examines the growth of extremist movements in Israel that openly promote the destruction of Al-Aqsa, from a relatively isolated fringe movement within Zionism to mainstream prominence in Israel today; as well as how threats to the historic mosque have grown precipitously in just the past month. MintPress interviewed Israeli author and activist Miko Peled; Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta in New York; Imam and scholar of Shia Islam, Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini, of the Islamic Institute of America; and Palestinian journalist and academic Ramzy Baroud for their perspectives on these extremist groups, their growing popularity, and the increasing threats to the current status quo at Haram El-Sharif/Temple Mount.

The second part of this series will detail the influence of this extremist movement in Israeli politics as well as American politics, particularly among Christian Zionist politicians in the United States. The ways in which this movement’s goal have also influenced Israeli and U.S. policy — particularly in relation to the so-called “Deal of the Century,” President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and the push for war against Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — will also be examined.

Two centuries in the cross-hairs

Though efforts to wrest the contested holy site from Jordanian and Palestinian control have picked up dramatically in recent weeks, the Al-Aqsa mosque compound had long been targeted prior to Israel’s founding and even prior to the formation of the modern Zionist movement.

For instance, Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Kalisher — who promoted the European Jewish colonization of Palestine from a religious perspective well before Zionism became a movement — expounded on an early form of what would later be labeled “religious Zionism” and was particularly interested in the acquisition of Haram el-Sharif (i.e., the Temple Mount) as a means of fulfilling prophecy.

As noted in the essay “Proto-Zionism and its Proto-Herzl: The Philosophy and Efforts of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher” by Sam Lehman-Wilzig, Professor of Israeli Politics and Judaic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, Kalisher sought to court wealthy European Jews to finance the purchase of Israel for the purpose of resettlement, particularly the Temple Mount. In an 1836 letter to Baron Amschel Rothschild, Kalisher suggested that the eldest brother of the wealthy banker family use his abundant funds to bring Jewish sovereignty to Palestine, specifically Jerusalem and the Temple Mount:

[E]specially at a time like this, when the Land of Israel is under the dominion of the Pasha… perhaps if his most noble Excellency pays him a handsome sum and purchases for him some other country (in Africa) in exchange for the Holy Land, which is presently small in quantity but great in quality… this money would certainly not be wasted… for when the leaders of Israel are gathered from every corner of the world… and transform it into an inhabited country, the many G-d-fearing and charitable Jews will travel there to take up their residency in the Holy Land under Jewish sovereignty… and be worthy to take up their portion in the offering upon the altar. And if the master (Ibrahim Pasha) does not desire to sell the entire land, then at least he should sell Jerusalem and its environs… or at least the Temple Mount and surrounding areas.” (emphasis added)

Kalisher’s request was met with a noncommittal response from Baron Rothschild, leading Kalisher to pursue other wealthy European Jewish families, like the Montefiores, with the same goal in mind. And, though Kalisher was initially unsuccessful in winning the support of the Rothschild family, other notable members of the wealthy European banking dynasty eventually did become enthusiastic supporters of Zionism in the decades that followed.

Kalisher was also influential in another way, as he was arguably the first modern Rabbi to reject the idea of patiently waiting for God to fulfill prophecy and proposed instead that man should take concrete steps that would lead to the fulfillment of such prophecies, a belief that Kalisher described as “self-help.” For Kalisher, settling European Jews in Palestine was but the first step, to be followed by other steps that would form an active as opposed to a passive approach towards Jewish Messianism. These subsequent steps included the construction of a Third Temple, to replace the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans around the year 70 C.E., and the reinitiation of ritual animal sacrifices in that Temple, which Kalisher believed could only be placed on the Temple Mount, where Al-Aqsa then sat and still sits.

Kalisher wasn’t alone in his views, as his contemporary, Rabbi Judah Alkalai, wrote the following in his book Shalom Yerushalayim:

It is obvious that the Mashiach ben David [Messiah of the House of David] will not appear out of thin air in a fiery chariot with fiery horses, but will come if the Children of Israel bend to the task of preparing themselves for him.”

Though Kalisher wasn’t the lone voice promoting these ideas, his beliefs — aside from promoting the physical settlement of European Jews in Palestine — remained relatively fringe for decades, if not more than a century, as secular Jews were hugely influential in the Zionist movement after its official formation. However, prominent religious Zionists did influence the Zionist movement in key ways prior to Israel’s founding. One such figure was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who sought to reconcile Zionism and Orthodox Judaism as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine, a position he assumed in 1924.

Yet, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of Neturei Karta, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group based in New York that opposes Zionism, told MintPress that many religious Zionists have since latched onto Kalisher’s ideas, which were widely rejected during his lifetime, in order to justify neocolonial actions sought by secular Zionists. “This rabbi, at the time, other rabbis ‘roared’ against him and his beliefs weren’t accepted,” Rabbi Weiss stated, “But now, the ones who are talking about building this Third Temple….these are Zionists and they have found some rabbi whose ideas benefit them that they have been using to justify Zionist acts” that are not aligned with Judaism “and make them kosher.”

The famous Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, at center, and the dome of Al-Aqsa Mosque pictured on May 15, 1976. Horst Faas | AP

Weiss further expanded on this point, noting that the participants of the modern religious Zionism movement that seek to build a new Jewish temple where Al-Aqsa currently stands are, at their core, Zionists who have used religious imagery and specific interpretations of religious texts as cover for neo-colonial acts, such as the complete re-making of the Temple Mount.

“It’s like a wolf in a sheepskin…These people who want to incorporate the teachings of this rabbi [Rabbi Kalisher] are proudly saying that they are Jewish, but are doing things Jews are forbidden from doing,” such as ascending to and standing upon the Temple Mount, which Rabbi Weiss stated was “a breach of Jewish law,” long forbidden by that law according to a consensus among Jewish scholars and rabbis around the world that continued well beyond the formation of the Zionist movement in the 19th century.

Weiss also told MintPress:

There are only a few sins in Judaism — which has many, many laws, that lead to a Jew being cut off from God — and to go up to the Temple Mount is one of them…This is because you need a certain level of holiness to ascend and… the process to attain that level of holiness and purity cannot be done today, because [aspects of and the items required by] the necessary purity rituals no longer exist today.”

Rabbi Weiss noted that, for this reason, the Muslim community that has historically governed the area where Al-Aqsa mosque stands never had any problems with the Jewish community in relation to the Temple Mount, as it has been known for centuries that Jews cannot ascend to the area where the mosque currently sits and instead prayed only at the Western Wall. He also stated that the prophetic idea of a Third Temple was, prior to Zionism, understood as indicating not a change in physical structures on the Temple Mount, but a metaphysical, spiritual change that would unite all of mankind to worship and serve God in unison.

Rabbi Weiss asserted that the conflict regarding Al-Aqsa mosque started only with the advent of Zionism and the associated neo-colonial ambition to fundamentally alter the status quo and structures present at the site as a means of erasing key parts (i.e., Palestinian parts) of its heritage. “This [the use of religion to justify ascending to and taking control of the Temple Mount] is a trap for conning other people into supporting them,” concluded the Rabbi.

Nonetheless, Kalisher’s impact can be seen in today’s Israel more than ever, thanks to the rise and mainstream acceptance within Israel of once-fringe elements of religious Zionism, which were deeply influenced by the ideas of rabbis like Kalisher and have served in recent decades as an incubator for some of Israel’s most radical political elements.

Meanwhile, as the debate within Judaism over the Temple Mount has changed dramatically since the 19th century, its significance in Islam has remained steadfast. According to Imam Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini, “Al-Aqsa is the third holiest mosque in Islam…it is considered to be the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven and has been mentioned in the Qoran, which glorifies that mosque and identifies it as a blessed mosque. All Muslims, whether they are Sunni or Shia, revere that mosque” — a fact that has remained unchanged for over a millennium and continues to today.

Religious Zionism gains political force

The modern rise of the religious Zionist movements that promote the destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque and its replacement with a Third Jewish Temple is most often traced back to the Six Day War of 1967. According to Miko Peled, who recently wrote a piece for MintPress News regarding the threats facing Al-Aqsa, “religious Zionism” as a political force became more noticeable following the 1967 war. Peled told MintPress:

After the ‘heartland’ of Biblical Israel came under Israeli control, the religious Zionists, who before then were marginalized, saw it as their mission to settle those newly conquered lands, and to be the new pioneers, so to speak. They took on the job that the socialist Zionist ideologues had in settling Palestine and ridding it of its native Arab population in the years leading up to Israel’s establishment and up to the early 1950s. They saw the “return” of Hebron, Bethlehem, Nablus, or Shchem and, of course, the Old City of Jerusalem as divine intervention and now it was their turn to make their mark.

It began with a small group of Messianic fanatics who forced the government – who at that point, after 1967, was still secular Zionist – to accept their existence in the highly populated areas within the West Bank. That was how the city of Kiryat Arba [illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank] was established. The government, it is worth noting, was happy to be forced into this. From a small group that people thought were fringe lunatics to a Jewish city in the heart of Hebron region.”

Peled further noted that this model, employed by the religious extremist groups that founded illegal West Bank settlements like Kiryat Arba, “has been used successfully since then and it is now used by the groups that are promoting the new Temple in place of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.” He continued, pointing out that “whereas 20-30 years ago they were considered a fringe group, this year they expect more than 50,000 people to enter the compound to support the group and their goals. Religious Israeli youth who opt out of military service and choose national service instead may work with the [Third] Temple building organizations.”

Extremist settlers escorted by Israeli after they stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on July 22, 2018. Mostafa Alkharouf | Anadolu

Dr. Ramzy Baroud — journalist, academic and founder of The Palestine Chronicle — agreed with Peled’s sense that the Third Temple movement or Temple Activist movement has grown dramatically in recent years and has become increasingly mainstream in Israel. Baroud told MintPress: 

There has been a massive increase in the number of Israeli Jews who force their way into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound to pray and practice various rituals…In 2017 alone, over 25,000 Jews who visited the compound — accompanied by thousands of soldiers and police officers and provoking many clashes that resulted in the death and wounding of many Palestinians. Since 2017, the increase in Jews visiting the compound has been very significant if compared to the previous year when around 14,000 Jews made that same journey.”

Baroud also noted:

[The Temple Activist movement] has achieved a great deal in appealing to mainstream Israeli Jewish society in recent years. At one point, it was a marginal movement, but with the rise of the far right in Israel, their ideas and ideologies and religious aspirations have also become part of the Israeli mainstream.”

As a result, Baroud asserted:

[There is] an increasing degree of enthusiasm among Israeli Jews that is definitely not happening at the margins [of society], but is very much a part of the mainstream, more so than at any time in the past, to take over the Al-Aqsa mosque, demolish the mosque in order to rebuild the so-called Third Temple.”

However, Rabbi Weiss disagreed with Peled and Baroud that this faction presents a real threat to the mosque, given that the mosque’s destruction is widely rejected by Diaspora Jewry (i.e., Jews living outside of Israel) and that destroying it would not only cause conflicts with the global Muslim community but also numerous Jewish communities outside of Israel.

As Rabbi Weiss told MintPress:

Some of the largest and most religious [i.e. ultra-orthodox] Jewish communities outside of Israel, like the second largest community of religious [ultra-orthodox] Jews in Williamsburg, Brooklyn [in New York], and also in Israel … are opposed to this concept of taking over the Temple Mount and other related ideas.”

Weiss argued that many of these religious Zionists in Israel that are pushing for a new Temple “do not follow Jewish law to the letter and don’t come from the very religious communities, including the settlers…They don’t go to expressly religious schools, they go to Zionist schools. Their whole view is built on Zionism and [secondarily] incorporates the religion,” as opposed to the reverse. As a result, the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque, in Weiss’ view, could greatly alienate the state of Israel from these more religious and ultra-orthodox communities.

In addition, Rabbi Weiss felt that many Jewish and secular Israelis would also reject such a move because it would create even more conflicts, which many Israelis do not want. He described the Temple Activists as “a vocal minority” that represented a “fringe” among adherents to Judaism and a group within Zionism that has tried to use the Temple Mount “in order to be able to excuse their occupation and to try to portray this [the occupation of Palestine] as a religious conflict,” with the conflict surrounding the Temple Mount being an extension of that.

An Israeli police officer raises his baton on Palestinians worshipers near the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, July 27, 2017. Mahmoud Illean | AP

Weiss believed that the push to take over the Temple Mount was a “scare tactic” aimed at securing the indefinite nature of the occupation, and noted that many Israelis did not want a spike in or renewal of conflict that would inevitably result if the mosque were to be destroyed. He also added that he did not think there was a “real threat” of the mosque being targeted because international rabbinical authorities have stood fast in their opposition to the project promoted by the Temple Activists.

“Tomorrow might be too late”

It is hardly a coincidence that the growth of Temple Activism and associated movements like “neo-Zionism” have paralleled the growth in threats to the Al-Aqsa mosque itself. Many of these threats can be understood through the doctrine developed by Rabbi Kalisher and others in the mid-19th century — the idea that “active” steps must be taken to bring about the reconstruction of a Jewish Temple at Haram El-Sharif in order to bring about the Messianic Age.

Indeed, during the 1967 war, General Shlomo Goren, the chief rabbi of the IDF, had told Chief of Central Command Uzi Narkiss that, shortly after Israel’s conquest of Jerusalem’s Old City, the moment had come to blow up the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. “Do this and you will go down in history,” Goren told Narkiss. According to Tom Segev’s book 1967, Goren felt that the site’s destruction could only be done under the cover of war: “Tomorrow might be too late.”

Goren was among the first Israelis to arrive at the then-recently conquered Old City in Jerusalem and was joined at the newly “liberated” Al-Aqsa compound by a young Yisrael Ariel, who now is a major leader in the Temple Activist movement and head of the Temple Institute, which is dedicated to constructing a Third Temple where Al-Asqa mosque currently stands.

Narkiss rejected Goren’s request, but did approve the razing of Jerusalem’s Moroccan quarter. According to Mondoweiss, the destruction of the nearly seven centuries old Jerusalem neighborhood was done for the “holy purpose” of making the Western Wall more accessible to Jewish Israelis. Some 135 homes were flattened, along with several mosques, and over 700 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed as part of that operation.

Following the occupation of East Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa has come under increasing threat, just as extremist movements who seek to destroy the site have grown. In 1969, a Christian extremist from Australia, Daniel Rohan, set fire to the mosque. Rohan had been studying in Israel and, prior to committing arson, had told American theology student Arthur Jones, who was studying with Rohan, that he had become convinced that a new temple had to be built where Al-Aqsa stood.

Then, in 1984, a group of messianic extremists known as the Jewish Underground was arrested for plotting to use explosives to destroy Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock. Ehud Yatom, who was a security official and commander of the operation that foiled the plot, told Israel’s Channel 2 in 2004 that the planned destruction of the site would have been “horrible, terrible,” adding that it could provoke “the entire Muslim world [into a war] against the state of Israel and against the Western world, a war of religions.”

One of those arrested in 1984 in connection with the bomb plot, former Jewish Underground member Yehuda Etzion, subsequently wrote from prison that his group’s mistake was not in targeting the historic mosque, which he called an “abomination,” but in acting before Israeli society would accept such an act. “The generation was not ready,” Etzion wrote, adding that those sympathetic to the Jewish Underground movement “must build a new force that grows very slowly, moving its educational and social activity into a new leadership.”

“Of course I cannot predict whether the Dome of the Rock will be removed from the Mount while the new body is developing or after it actually leads the people,” Etzion stated, “but the clear fact is that the Mount will be purified [from Islamic shrines] with certainty…”

Upon his release from prison, Etzion founded the Chai Vekayam (Alive and Existing) movement, a group that Al Jazeera’s Mersiha Gadzo described as aimed at “shaping public opinion as a prerequisite for building a Third Temple in the religious complex in Jerusalem’s Old City where Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located.” Gadzo also notes that “according to messianic belief, building the Third Temple at the Al Aqsa compound — where the First and Second Temples stood some 2,000 years ago — would usher the coming of the Messiah.”

Six years later, another group called the Temple Mount Faithful, which is dedicated to building the Third Temple, provoked what became known as the Al-Aqsa massacre in 1990 after its members attempted to place a cornerstone for the Third Temple on the Temple Mount / Haram El-Sharif, leading to riots that saw Israeli police shoot and kill over 20 Palestinians and wound an estimated 150 more.

Blood-stained footmarks mark the entrance to Al Aqsa Mosque after Israeli police opened fire on Palestinian worshipers in 1996. Khaled Zighari | AP

This was followed by the riots in 1996 after Israel opened up a series of tunnels that had been dug under Al-Aqsa mosque that many Palestinians worried would be used to damage or destroy the mosque. Those concerns may have been well-founded, given the involvement of then- and current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Third Temple activist groups in creating the tunnels and in subsequent excavations near the holy site, which were and continue to be officially described as “archaeological” in nature. During the 1996 incident, 80 Palestinians and 14 Israeli police officers were killed.

Some Israeli archaeologists have argued that these tunnels have not been built for archaeological or scientific purposes and are highly unlikely to result in any new discoveries. One such Israeli archaeologist, Yoram Tseverir, told Middle East Monitor in 2014 that “the claims that these excavations aim at finding scientific information are marginal” and called the still-ongoing government-sponsored excavations under Al-Aqsa “wrong.” When those “archaeological” excavations at Al-Aqsa resulted in damage to the Western Wall near Al-Aqsa last year, a chorus of prominent Palestinians, including the spokesman for the Fatah Party, claimed that Israel’s government had devised a plan to destroy the mosque.

Since 2000, Al-Aqsa mosque has been the site of incidents that have resulted in new state crackdowns by Israel against Palestinians both within and well outside of Jerusalem. Indeed, the Second Intifada was largely provoked by the visit of the then-Likud candidate for prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who entered Al-Aqsa mosque under heavy guard. Then-spokesman for Likud, Ofir Akounis, was later quoted by CNN as saying that the reason for Sharon’s visit was “to show that under a Likud government it [the Temple Mount] will remain under Israeli sovereignty.”

That single visit by Sharon led to five years of heightened tensions, more than three thousand dead Palestinians and an estimated thousand dead Israelis, as well as a massive and still continuing crackdown on Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud told MintPress that Sharon’s provocation in particular, and subsequent provocations, are often planned and used by Israeli politicians in order to justify crackdowns and restrictions on Palestinians. He argued:

[Some powerful Israeli politicians] use these regular provocations at Al Aqsa to create the kind of tensions that increase violence in the West Bank and to [then] carry out whatever policies they have in mind. They know exaclty how to provoke Palestinians and there is no other issue that is as sensitive and unifying in the Palestinian psyche as Al-Aqsa mosque.

Not only do we need to be aware of the fact that [provocations at] Al-Aqsa mosque are being used to implement archaic, destructive plans [i.e., destruction of Al-Aqsa and construction of a Third Temple] by certain elements that are now very much at the core of Israeli politics, but also the fact that this type of provocation is also used to implement broader policies pertaining to Palestinians elsewhere.”

Drums beating loud

While there have long been efforts to destroy the historic Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, recent weeks have seen a disturbing and dramatic uptick in incidents that suggest that the influential groups in Israel that have long pushed for the mosque’ s destruction may soon get their way. This reflects what Ramzy Baroud described to MintPress as how support for the construction of the Third Temple where Al-Aqsa currently sits is now “greater than at any time in the past” within Israeli society.

Earlier this month on June 2, a religious adviser to the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Al-Habbash, took to social media to warn of an “Israeli plot against the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” adding that “If the Muslims don’t act now [to save the site]… the entire world will pay dearly.”

Al-Habbash’s statement was likely influenced by a disturbing event that occurred that same day at the revered compound when Israeli police provided cover for extremist Israeli settlers who illegally entered the compound during the final days of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Israeli police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to disperse Palestinian worshippers who had gathered at the mosque during one of Islam’s most important holidays while allowing over a thousand Israeli Jews to enter the compound. Forty-five Palestinians were wounded and several were arrested.

Though such provocative visits by Jewish Israelis to Al-Aqsa have occurred with increasing frequency in recent years, this event was different because it up-ended a long-standing agreement between Jordan’s government, which manages the site, and Israel that no such visits take place during important Islamic holidays. As a consequence, Jordan accused Israel’s government of “flagrant violations” of that agreement by allowing visits from religious nationalists, which Jordan described as “provocative intrusions by extremists.”

Less than a week after the incident, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister, Miri Regev, a member of the Netanyahu-led Likud Party, called for more settler extremists to storm the compound, stating: “We should do everything to keep ascending to the Temple Mount … And hopefully, soon we will pray in the Temple Mount, our sacred place.” In addition, Regev also thanked Israel’s Interior Security Minister, Gilad Erdan, and Jerusalem’s police chief for guarding the settler extremists who had entered the compound.

In 2013, then-member of the Likud Party Moshe Feiglin told the Knesset that allowing Jewish Israelis to enter the compound is “not about prayer.” “Arabs don’t mind that Jews pray to God. Why should they care? We all believe in God,” Feiglin — who now heads the Zehut, or Identity, Party — stated, adding, “The struggle is about sovereignty. That’s the true story here. The story is about one thing only: sovereignty.”

In other words, Likud and its ideological allies view granting Jewish Israelis entrance to “pray” at the site of the mosque as a strategy aimed at reducing Palestinian-Jordanian control over the site. Feiglin’s past comments give credibility to Rabbi Weiss’ claim, referenced earlier on in this report, that the religious underpinnings and religious appeals of the Temple Activists are secondary to the settler-colonial (i.e., Zionist) aspect of the movement, which seeks to remove Palestinian and Muslim heritage from the Temple Mount as part of the ongoing Zionist project.

Feiglin, earlier this year in April, called for the immediate construction of the Third Temple, telling a Tel Aviv conference, “I don’t want to build a [Third] Temple in one or two years, I want to build it now.” The Times of Israel, reporting on Feiglin’s comments, noted that the Israeli politician is “enjoying growing popularity.”

Earlier this month, and not long after Miri Regev’s controversial comments, an event attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Leon, used a banner that depicted the Jerusalem skyline with the Dome of the Rock noticeably absent. Though some may write off such creative photo editing as a fluke, it is but the latest in a series of similar incidents where official events or materials have edited out the iconic building and, in some cases, have replaced it with a reconstructed Jewish temple.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman poses with a picture of the ‘Third Temple,’ May 22, 2018. Israel Cohen | Kikar Hashabat

The day before that event, Israeli police had arrested three members of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound’s Reconstruction Committee, which is overseen by the government of Jordan. Those arrested included the committee’s head and its deputy head, and the three men were arrested while performing minor restoration work in an Al-Aqsa courtyard. The Jordan-run authority condemned the arrests, for which no official reason was given, and called the move by Israeli police “an intervention in their [the men’s] reconstruction work.” According to Palestinian news agency Safa, Israeli police have also prevented the entry of tools necessary for restoration work to the site and have restricted members of the authority from performing critical maintenance work.

In addition, another important figure at Al-Aqsa, Hanadi Al-Halawani, who teaches at the mosque school and has long watched over the site to prevent its occupation by Israeli forces, was arrested late last month.

Arrests of other key Al-Aqsa personnel have continued in recent days, such as the arrest of seven Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, including guards of the mosque, and their subsequent ban from entering the site. The Palestinians were arrested at their homes last Sunday night in early morning raids and the official reason for their arrest remains unclear. So many arrests in such a short period have raised concerns that, should the spate of arrests of important Al-Aqsa personnel continue, future incidents at the site, such as the mysterious fire that broke out last April at Al-Aqsa while France’s Notre Dame was also ablaze, may not be handled as effectively owing to staff shortages.

Soon after those arrests, 60 members of a settler extremist group entered the al-Aqsa compound under heavy guard from Israeli police. Safa news agency reported that these settlers have recently been accompanied by Israeli intelligence officials in their incursions at the site.

All of these recent provocations and arrests in connection with the mosque come soon after the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, publicly stated in late March that he had recently come under great pressure to relinquish Jordan’s custodianship of the mosque and the contested holy site upon which it is built. Abdullah II vowed to continue custodianship over Christian and Muslim sites in Jerusalem, including Al-Aqsa and declined to say who was pressuring him over the site. However, his comments about this pressure to cede control over the mosque came just days after he had visited the U.S. and met with American Vice President Mike Pence, a Christian Zionist who believes that a Jewish Temple must replace Al-Aqsa to fulfill an end times prophecy.

In May, an Israeli government-linked research institute, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, wrote that Abdullah II had nearly been toppled in mid-April, just weeks after publicly discussing external pressure to relinquish control over Al-Aqsa. The report stated that Abdullah II had been a target of a “plot undermining his rule,” which led him to replace several senior members of his government. That report further claimed that the plot had been aimed at removing obstacles to the Trump administration’s “Deal of the Century,” which is supported by Israel’s government.

Last year, some Israeli politicians sought to push for a transfer of the site’s custodianship to Saudi Arabia, sparking concern that this could be connected to plans by some Third Temple activists to remove Al-Aqsa from Jerusalem and transfer it piece-by-piece to the Saudi city of Mecca. On Thursday, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published an article asserting that “tectonic shifts” were taking place in relation to who controls Al-Aqsa, with a Saudi-funded political group making dramatic inroads that could soon alter which country controls the historic mosque compound.

Sayyed Hassan Al-Qazwini told MintPress that, in his view, the current custodianship involving Jordan’s government is not ideal, as control over the Al-Aqsa mosque “should in the hands of its people, [and] Al-Aqsa mosque belongs Palestine;” if not, at the very least, a committee of Muslim majority nations should be formed to govern the holy site because of its importance. As for Saudi Arabia potentially receiving control over the site, Al-Qazwini told MintPress that “the Saudis are not qualified as they are not even capable of running the holy sites in Saudi Arabia itself. Every year, there has been a tragedy and many pilgrims have died during hajj time [annual Islamic pilgrimage].”

Once fringe, now approaching consensus

The threat to Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock compound, the third holiest site in Islam and of key importance to three major world religions, is the result of the dramatic growth of what was once a fringe movement of extremists. After the Six Day War, these fringe elements have fought to become more mainstream within Israel and have sought to gain international support for their religious-colonialist vision, particularly in the United States. As this article has shown, the threats to Al-Aqsa have grown significantly in the past decades, spiking in just the past few weeks.

As former Jewish Underground member Yehuda Etzion had called for decades ago, an educational and social movement aimed at gaining influence with Israeli government leadership has been hugely successful in its goal of engineering consent for a Third Temple among many religious and secular Israelis. So successful has this movement been that numerous powerful and influential Israeli politicians, particularly since the 1990s, have not only openly promoted these beliefs, and the destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, but have also diverted significant amounts of government funding to organizations dedicated to replacing the historic mosque with a new temple.

As the second and final installment of this series will show, this movement has gained powerful allies, not just in Israel’s government, but among many evangelical Christians in the United States, including top figures in the Trump administration who also feel that the destruction of Al-Aqsa and the reconstruction of a Jewish Temple are prerequisites for the fulfillment of prophecy, albeit a different one. Furthermore, given the influence of such movements on the Israeli and U.S. governments, these beliefs of active Messianism are also informing key policies of these same governments and, in doing so, are pushing the world towards a dangerous war.

Feature photo | Israeli police stand next to the Dome of the Rock mosque at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, July 27, 2017. Mahmoud Illean | AP

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism

Source: https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-jerusalem-al-aqsa-third-temple/259926/

The post In Israel the Push to Destroy Jerusalem’s Iconic Al-Aqsa Mosque Goes Mainstream first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Right-wing Jews in Al-Aqsa’s compound (Twitter\@GrassrootsJlem)

Thousands of messianic Jews climbed the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem this week, hoping to establish an increased presence on the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, among the most important Muslim shrines in the world and potent symbols of Palestinian nationalism.

As Jewish-Israeli citizens across the country celebrated the holiday of Sukkot, Israeli security forces facilitated the ascent of the far-right Jewish groups – including Jews who aspire to the ushering of a new messianic Jewish age – to the Muslim holy sites, and inhibited the movement of local Palestinians, retaining their identity documents at the compound entrance.

Israeli forces erected barricades around the compound and throughout the Old City, giving it the feel of “a military barracks”.

“There is a perceptible increase both in the number of settlers raiding Al-Aqsa, as well as in the religious rituals that they conduct on the site,” Khalid Zabarqa, a lawyer and expert on Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, told Middle East Eye. “They grow increasingly audacious.”

Videos uploaded to social media in recent days show Templar activists prostrating themselves in prayer on the Al-Aqsa compound and singing the Israeli national anthem, provocations that are in violation of the site rules.

As hundreds of right-wing Jews assembled at Al-Aqsa, they were joined by a commensurately large phalanx of police officers, says Zabarqa. Muslim worshippers who did not give the settlers a wide berth were detained for hours, he said.

“It’s not in Israel’s security interests, but they are trying to change the status quo, to draw us into a religious war,” Zabarqa added.

In the occupied West Bank, the scene was repeated as Israeli soldiers locked a cordon around the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, ostensibly to protect over a thousand Jewish settlers visiting Joseph’s Tomb, a nearby shrine established by Samaritans 1700 years ago, now revered by Muslims and Jews.

In the violent clashes that ensued, Israeli forces employed sound bombs, tear gas canisters and rubber-coated metal bullets, wounding 24 Palestinians, including journalists, according to a Quds report.

Palestinian protesters throwing stones injured an Israeli soldier and damaged an Israeli bulldozer with Molotov cocktails.

In recent weeks, posters have been plastered throughout ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, extolling religious residents to ascend to the Haram al-Sharif, or Temple Mount, over the Jewish holidays. Traditionally, ultra-Orthodox Jews have steered clear of the site, holding that Jews may not approach the holy ground until a messiah emerges from amongst them.

On Wednesday, a Templar group protested in Jerusalem’s Old City over their inability to transform the Haram al-Sharif from a Muslim holy site to a Jewish one, calling its current occupants “foreigners who defile the holy hill”.

“The Western Wall is a symbol of destruction and exile, its time has passed. In 1967, with God’s grace, we returned to the Temple Mount not to ascend it as tourists – woe, what shame! – but to ascend it as Jewish people, who will soon establish the third temple,” Temple Mount faithful founder Gershon Salomon told Israel Channel 7.

In 1984, Jewish terrorists amassed explosives and plotted to bomb the Dome of the Rock, in the hope that it would raise the ire of Muslims around the world and trigger an apocalyptic clash of civilizations. The conspirators hoped that the ensuing conflict would galvanize messianic sentiment amongst Jewish citizens and allow them to erase the separations that exist in Israel between synagogue and state.

The orchestrator of that bomb plot, Yehuda Etzion, was jailed for four years over his role in the incident.

Since that time, however, he has become a prominent member of the Templar movement, which aims to replace the Muslim structures with a Jewish temple, in the fashion of the tabernacle for animal sacrifices that stood on the spot of the Dome of the Rock 2,000 years ago.

Since that ancient temple was destroyed by Roman forces in 70 AD, Jews have made regular religious pilgrimages to the Western Wall, one of the containment walls of the Haram al-Sharif compound. The Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque were built on the spot 600 years later, and they have been Muslim shrines ever since.

The United Nations decision of 1947 to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states determined that Jerusalem would remain an ex-territorial international city, but it was split between Israel and Jordan in the bitter war that followed.

Twenty years later, Israeli forces conquered the Haram al-Sharif, the rest of Jerusalem, and all the other territories which were resolved to be part of a Palestinian state.

Although under Israeli occupation, the site is still managed by an Islamic Waqf, or religious authority. But far-right Israelis are attempting to cultivate support for an increased Jewish presence on the site, hoping to eventually evict Palestinians and extinguish their aspirations for full rights and a state of their own.

Templars were once considered a small fringe movement, but in recent years, they have found favour in the Netanyahu administration, receiving the endorsement of dozens of government lawmakers.

Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/messianists-jewish-presence-jerusalem-mosque-al-aqsa

The post Right-wing Jewish movement hones in on Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“The movement emphasizes the fact that Israel is an occupying power and she has no sovereignty in east Jerusalem and certainly not over the Al Aqsa Mosque, including all the mosques at the compound, the Dome of the Rock, its courtyards and its walls,” Fatah said in the statement, which was published in Palestinian media outlets and the movement’s official websites.

It also stated, “On the 48th anniversary of the burning of the mosque by an Australian Zionist, we emphasize that Jerusalem and especially Al Aqsa are inseparable parts of the land that was occupied in 1967.”

Israel was not behind the mosque arson. On August 21, 1969, Denis Michael Rohan, an Australian found by a court to be insane, set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque. He was arrested and stood trial in Israel. After the court found him to be mentally ill, Rohan was hospitalized in a mental institution and was deported on humanitarian grounds in 1974.

Fatah warned the Israeli government against any supposed attempt “to harm the Al Aqsa Mosque through actions above ground and actions below ground, or any attempt to divide the mosque, including a division of time (between Jewish and Muslim worshippers) or a physical division. We demand that the historic status quo and the laws of the site be maintained.”

Fatah called on the Arab and Muslim world to take their share of responsibility regarding Jerusalem and Al Aqsa “by giving political and financial support and praying at the Al Aqsa Mosque in order to help Jerusalem deal with Israel’s Judaization policy. The movement calls to encourage visits to the compound in order to preserve the Arab, Muslim and Christian identity of the Holy City.”

The statement wildly claimed, “The Zionist danger that stands before Jerusalem and Al Aqsa continues to exist (while) Israeli violations are ongoing and are reflected in the daily visits of the settlers and by falsifying the facts and the creation of a new reality on the ground that contradicts international conventions.”

Hamas also called on the Arab and Muslim world to shake off their apathy on issues regarding the Al Aqsa Mosque. It scolded countries “among which are those that are quick to normalize their relations with the enemy. The Arabs must wake up and stop cooperating with the schemes of normalization and the attempts to please the Zionists.”

The movement promised that on the 49th anniversary of the fire at the mosque, “it won’t recognize Israel and won’t agree to give up a single grain of sand from the land of Palestine. It will continue down the path of jihad and resistance until the expulsion of the occupation.”

The Iran-backed Islamic Jihad released a statement similar to that from Hamas calling on Arab countries to stop working toward normalization and take responsibility for the so-called defense of the Al Aqsa Mosque. The movement praised the residents of Jerusalem for their steadfast stand in “defense” of the mosque.

Last month, Muslims protested and engaged in violent riots after Israel installed metal detectors at the entrance to the Temple Mount. Protest leaders, including top Palestinian officials, claimed the metal detectors were part of an Israeli conspiracy to hamper Muslim worship on the Mount. Israel’s new security measures were put into place in direct response to a Palestinian terrorist attack in which three assailants somehow smuggled weapons onto the site. After weeks of protests, Israel eventually removed the metal detectors from the site.

Source: http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2017/08/22/abbass-fatah-party-israel-no-right-temple-mount/

The post Abbas’s Fatah Party: Israel Has No Right to Temple Mount first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.