Ben Gvir waves Israeli flag on Temple Mount with far-right MK who calls ‘to get rid of all the mosques, construct the Temple’

Far right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Yitzhak Kroizer wave an Israeli flag on the Temple Mount ahead of this year’s Jerusalem Day march through the Old City of Jerusalem.

“We restored governance on the Temple Mount thanks to determination and deterrence. This year, Ramadan was the quietest, thanks to deterrence. The Temple Mount is in our hands,” he declares.

The ultranationalist lawmakers then dance and sing with the flag next to the Dome of the Rock.

This morning, Kroizer visited the site alongside his children and father, a prominent Kahanist rabbi, to mark Jerusalem Day. He was photographed prostrating on the ground at the flashpoint holy site, facing towards the Dome of the Rock.

“The time has come to get rid of all the mosques and work to construct the Temple!” he later wrote on Facebook.

On Wednesday, Negev, Galilee, and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, also of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, urged the public to visit the Temple Mount to see the “revolution” led there by  Ben Gvir.

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City is the holiest place in Judaism, as the site of the two biblical temples. Known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, it is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam.

Jews are not officially allowed to pray at the Temple Mount under an arrangement known as the status quo, but the Israel Police, which comes under the purview of Ben Gvir’s ministry, have increasingly tolerated prayer there. Ben Gvir has said repeatedly that his policy is to allow Jewish prayer, drawing rebukes from US and international officials, as well as warnings from the security establishment that renewed conflict over the site could pose a risk to national security.

Ben Gvir has also rebuffed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated insistence that the decades-old status quo remains in force.