Ben Gvir says he feels like ‘master’ of Temple Mount as Jordan slams his trip to Jerusalem holy site

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir says he feels like the “master” of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and vows to keep pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expand Jewish access there, as Jordan condemns the far-right minister’s visit to the holy site.

The mount is where the two Jewish temples of antiquity once stood, and it currently houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site. It is a regular flashpoint between Israeli security forces and Palestinians.

Under a longstanding status quo, Jews may visit but not pray at the compound, which is administered by the Jordanian Waqf, or Muslim religious endowments authority.

Ben Gvir, who could be seen in footage earlier today praying on the Temple Mount, says in a video from the site that “today, you feel like the master of the house here.”

“I keep pressing the prime minister to do more and more and more things. We must go even further, higher and higher,” Ben Gvir says, standing alongside Rabbi Elisha Wolfson of the Temple Mount Yeshiva, which encourages Jews to ascend and pray at the site.

“What a complete transformation,” Ben Gvir adds. When he first visited the Temple Mount as a teenager, he adds, Palestinians “wouldn’t stop shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and surrounding us,” where “if a Jew so much as muttered something, he would be arrested.”

Wolfson thanks Ben Gvir, whom he credits with “making an enormous historic change” at the site, not only for Jews who pray at the Temple Mount, but “for the people of Israel, who have been waiting 2,000 years.”

Ben Gvir has long called for Jewish prayer rights at the site, and in January, the police, which he oversees, allowed Jewish worshipers to ascend the Temple Mount for the first time with printed prayer sheets handed out by Temple Mount Yeshiva students.

In a statement, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry expresses its “harsh condemnation for the continued, unacceptable raids by the far-right minister, facilitated by the Israeli occupation police,” in the Al-Aqsa compound.

The compound in its entirety is “a place of worship exclusively for Muslims” under the sole jurisdiction of the Waqf, the Jordanian ministry says.

There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office. Previous such visits and statements by Ben Gvir have prompted Netanyahu to announce that there is no change in Israel’s policy of keeping the status quo.

Reuters contributed to this report.