Heritage Ministry to fund Temple Mount tours amid far-right push to alter status quo
Decision by ministry, headed by politician from far-right Otzma Yehudit party, will mark first time state has funded such activities on flashpoint holy site
The Heritage Ministry said Tuesday it was planning to start funding and conducting guided tours of the Temple Mount for “tens of thousands of Jews, and hundreds of thousands of tourists” as far-right members of the coalition push to change the status of the flashpoint holy site.
The statement from the ministry, headed by Amichai Eliyahu of the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party, comes after the Kan public broadcaster reported Monday that the plan had been approved by the police.
They will be the first such tours to be financed by the state and the latest in a series of recent challenges to the disputed holy site’s status quo — a source of rising tension between far-right elements of the coalition and the rest of the government, which is mindful of the fact that changes to procedures on the compound that houses the Al-Aqsa-Mosque and the Dome of the Rock cause outrage in the Muslim world.
According to the ministry, participants in the tours will “hear an account of the mount’s Jewish Heritage that is historically accurate, free from the alternative facts and lying narratives that are written to advance an antisemitic agenda.”
The project is set to cost some NIS 2 million ($543,000) and begin after the Jewish High Holiday season this fall, Kan reported, showing a document from Jerusalem District Police Commander Amir Arzani approving the tours.
According to police, “the visits will be conducted within the framework of the existing visits to the Temple Mount area, and in accordance with the rules for visiting the site.”
Amid reports that the visits had been approved by the National Security Council in the Prime Minister’s Office, the PMO issued a statement saying that the NSC “did not approve and was not asked to approve” the Heritage Ministry-funded tours.
Guided tours are already conducted on the mount by activist groups and nonprofits that advocate an increased Jewish presence on the site, but none have hitherto been conducted or directly funded by government ministries.
The announcement of the project comes the controversy following a recent declaration by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who heads Otzma Yehudit, that it was his “policy” to allow Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, as videos circulated of Jewish men prostrating themselves at the site.
The far-right politician made those remarks while visiting the Temple Mount in late July, on the Jewish fast day of Tisha b’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Jewish Temples that once stood on the site.
While Israeli law technically allows Jews to pray anywhere in the country, courts have long upheld police discretion to enforce a ban on Jewish prayer as part of a sensitive status quo agreement governing the site, which is considered the holiest site in Judaism and the third-holiest in Islam.
הבוקר בהר הבית:
מטורללי הכת המשיחית לא נותנים לתקיפה קטנה בלבנון להפריע להם להשתחוות להשם יתברך, גם במחיר של הבערת הר הבית, בזבוז הזמן היקר של כוחות הביטחון באמצע מלחמה והסטת כוחות ממשימות קריטיות אחרות, הצתת הגזרה הפנימית וחבלה בתמיכה הבינלאומיות בשעות רגישות מבחינה בטחונית.מי… pic.twitter.com/kbeGoRZbR3
— Nava Rozolyo נאווה רוזוליו (@rozolyo) August 25, 2024
On Monday, Ben Gvir reiterated his position, telling Army Radio that Israeli law does not discriminate between religious rights for Jews and Muslims at the holy site.
“The policies on the Temple Mount allow prayer, period,” Ben Gvir said.
“It’s not like I do everything I want on Temple Mount,” he added. “If I did everything I wanted on Temple Mount, the Israeli flag would have long been flying there.” Asked if he would put a synagogue on the site if he could, he answered, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”
In response to Ben Gvir’s comments, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an oft-repeated statement insisting that there was “no change to the official status quo on the Temple Mount,” but avoided mentioning his ultranationalist coalition partner by name.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant accused the minister of endangering Israel with his comments, while Education Minister Yoav Kisch called the remarks “stupid and unnecessary populism.”
In a post to X on Tuesday, Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman derided what he called “the worst government in Israel’s history” for focusing “exclusively on controversial issues that threaten to disintegrate Israeli society, such as the Temple Mount and judicial reform.”
Ben Gvir’s comments on Monday also drew widespread criticism from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community, which tends to follow a traditional interpretation of Jewish law according to which it is forbidden, at this point in history, to step foot on the site, due to concerns over ritual purity.
Yated Neeman, a Haredi newspaper affiliated with the coalition’s United Torah Judaism party, called Ben Gvir the “pyromaniac politician.”
Following Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount in late July, Haredi religious leaders lined up to condemn the minister, with five prominent Jerusalem-based rabbis publicly denouncing the visit in a video aired online with Arabic-language subtitles.
The video was reportedly shared following a request by Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion and security officials, who sought to calm concerns in the Arab public of changes to the status quo, a longstanding tinderbox that is frequently cited as the trigger for eruptions of violence.
The Hamas terror group called its October 7 attack— when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war— “Operation Al Aqsa Flood,” invoking the Muslim name for the Temple Mount complex.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also condemned Ben Gvir’s statements on Monday, issuing a statement that referred to the minister indirectly as “a minister in the Israeli occupation government.”
“The kingdom affirms its categorical rejection of these extremist and inflammatory statements, and its rejection of the ongoing provocations of the feelings of Muslims around the world,” the statement said, alongside calls to end “the humanitarian catastrophe” endured by Palestinians and to “hold Israeli officials accountable” for violations of international law.
