From the Liveblog of
Monday, August 26, 2024
Ben Gvir says Jews can pray on Temple Mount; Netanyahu insists status quo unchanged
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says in a statement that “there is no change to the status quo on the Temple Mount,” after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir claims that Jews can legally pray at the flashpoint site.
The statement does not mention Ben Gvir, who told Army Radio today 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 says.
“It’s not like I do everything I want on Temple Mount,” he adds. “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.”
“The premier knows that when I joined the government I said in the simplest way that there will be no discrimination at the Temple Mount, just like Muslims can pray at the Western Wall,” says Ben Gvir, who raised hackles with a high-profile visit to the site earlier this month.
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.
Following the interview, Interior Minister Moshe Arbel calls on Netanyahu to remove the far-right firebrand from his post overseeing police, warning that his “lack of thinking could be paid for in blood.”
Ben Gvir’s “irresponsible comments put into doubt Israel’s strategic alliances with Muslim states as part of an alliance against the evil Iranian axis,” he says.
Arbel hails from the Shas party, one of two ultra-Orthodox coalition factions that have blanched at Ben Gvir’s attempts to increase the Jewish presence on the site. Many ultra-Orthodox follow longstanding rabbinic prohibitions on visiting the compound, revered by religious Jews as sacred ground.
