Status quo at Jerusalem's holiest site under threat as Israeli nationalists flout rules

Reuters

"The whole land of Israel was promised to the children of God… and this is where we are going to build a new Temple for the entire humanity to come and pray together."

Those were the potentially incendiary words of Moshe Feiglin, a right-wing nationalist Israeli politician, who spoke to me as he came down from the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, where he had been praying and singing religious songs with a group of around 20 other religious Jews.

Feiglin spoke openly and clearly, almost as if his argument was neither controversial nor contested.

But what he was saying and doing was in complete contravention of a sensitive agreement that seeks to maintain the peace at one of the most holy and emotionally charged places on Earth.

For Moshe Feiglin and others like him, it is simple. They want to build a huge new Jewish temple on the very site which, for the last 1,400 years, has been one of the most sacred places in Islam - al-Aqsa.

The compound - also known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), and to Jews as the Temple Mount - is one of the most recognisable and visually impressive sites in the Middle East.

The gold-covered Dome of the Rock dominates the 35-acre site and can be seen for miles around. Al-Aqsa is mentioned in the Quran, and it is from where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. It is also a site reserved exclusively for Muslim prayer – but is that about to change?

Maarten Lernout/BBC

The site is also the most important place in Judaism. Below the compound, alongside its supporting Western Wall, Jews pray and mourn the destruction by the Romans of the Jewish Temple on the platform above, almost 2,000 years ago.

Under what is known as the Status Quo, a decades-old understanding, custody of the al-Aqsa compound is the responsibility of a Jordanian-administered Islamic body - the Waqf (Endowment).

Non-Muslims are allowed to visit al-Aqsa but they are not allowed to pray there or carry out religious rites. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel and most ultra-Orthodox rabbis also prohibit Jewish prayer on the site on halachic (Jewish legal) grounds.

Those are the conventions and rulings that Feiglin and others now openly flout and disregard.

'Multi-faith centre'

Recent reports and claims that Israeli and US officials are working together to abandon the Status Quo have caused widespread alarm.

The news outlet, Middle East Eye, was told by multiple sources that a new body created by the Israeli government would declare the al-Aqsa compound a "multi-faith centre".

When questioned about those reports recently at a Congressional hearing, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said he had "no knowledge of them", although the high-profile US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has often spoken out about Jewish connections to the holy places in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

Other reports suggested that large-scale Jewish prayer would be allowed on the site and that all aspects of its governance would be gradually taken over by Israel, which captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City and its holy places, along with the rest of the West Bank, from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed it in a move that is not recognised by most countries.

The Israeli prime minister's office has repeatedly said that there has been no change to the Status Quo.

Maarten Lernout/BBC

"It will not happen," warns Dr Mustafa Abu Sway, the Deputy Head of the Islamic Waqf Council.

On a vantage point in the Old City, he acknowledges that control of al-Aqsa is a sensitive issue in which Israeli protagonists feel empowered.

He also fears, with some justification, given the historical context, that any formal change in the Status Quo could easily lead to another explosion of tension between Jews and Muslims.

"Peace without leaving al-Aqsa Mosque alone, is simply opening a Pandora's box. It is jeopardising the peace in the region, and it pitches everyone against everyone," says Abu Sway, a respected Palestinian expert in Islamic studies and regional history.

International alarm

Jordan, Gulf countries and Egypt have all expressed alarm and concern at the recent erosion of Islamic authority at al-Aqsa. The British government, too, has said that "the historic status quo arrangements at Jerusalem's Holy Sites must be respected".

But some outspoken nationalists in Israel feel that momentum is with them.

"The Temple Mount is ours. It's in our hands!" chanted Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, in a widely circulated video from last month's Jerusalem Day march, after he led a group of flag-waving Israeli nationalists through East Jerusalem, including the Old City's Muslim quarter, and up to the al-Aqsa compound.

Reuters

The hugely controversial member of Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government is a regular visitor to al-Aqsa.

In the video, he sings songs and unfurls an Israeli flag in complete contravention of the Status Quo.

But for Ben-Gvir, who has already used his ministerial office to permit Jewish prayers and songs in parts of the compound, it's just the start of increasing Jewish and Israeli control of the site.

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More than 25 years ago, in September 2000, the right-wing Israeli nationalist politician, Ariel Sharon, did what was then unthinkable. Accompanied by hundreds of armed Israeli police officers, the leader of the opposition Likud Party walked through the Old City up on to the al-Aqsa compound.

It was widely regarded as a deliberately provocative and inflammatory act and one of the sparks that lit the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, also known as the al-Aqsa intifada. In the following five years, more than 4,000 people were killed in violence across Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It is not difficult to envisage a scenario where the pressures today to radically change the running and ownership of the most politically sensitive piece of real estate on the planet could lead to a similarly disastrous outcome.