‘This is a religious war’: Likud MK calls for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount
While repeatedly challenging Netanyahu on a range of issues, lawmaker Amit Halevi insists the PM is a ‘hero’ whose coalition deserves support despite internal disagreements
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Last week, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stood on the Temple Mount and, for the third time in as many months, declared the end to the longstanding status quo governing the contentious Jerusalem holy site.
As Orthodox Jews prostrated themselves and prayed loudly, the chief of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authority, declaring that the government’s “policy is to allow prayer.”
He was immediately rebuffed by Netanyahu, who reasserted his support for restrictions on Jewish worship at the site where the two Jewish Temples once stood and which is now the home of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque.
However, not everybody in Netanyahu’s party agreed with the premier, with several Likud lawmakers voicing support for Ben Gvir’s position — among them MK Amit Halevi, who was one of more than 1,600 Jewish Israelis to visit the Temple Mount during last week’s Tisha B’Av fast commemorating the destruction of the two Temples.
In a statement, the national-religious Halevi told reporters that he had ascended the Mount to pray “for victory in the war.”
“This is a war for the Mount, for God, against an enemy that in the name of religion fills the world with murderousness, barbarism and evil in the face of the Israeli culture and its call from the Temple Mount for justice, truth, morality and mercy,” he said.
Interviewed recently by The Times of Israel in his Knesset office, Halevi — who has previously proposed dividing the holy site between Muslims and Jews — highlighted the centrality of the Temple Mount to the current conflict against Hamas in Gaza.
“I think prayer on the Temple Mount is very important because this is the real war here,” he argued, insisting that Israel was battling “radical Muslims” and “real infidels” who are operating according to “the religious vision of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood or the Shia ayatollah regime.”
The Temple Mount represents “world peace, justice, truth, morality [and] this is the real answer,” Halevi continued, clarifying that he had not coordinated his trip with Ben Gvir and pushing back against arguments that Jewish visits are a provocation.
“We are in a Jewish sovereign state. And if a Knesset member or a minister goes to the holiest place of the Jewish people, the Temple Mount, it’s unacceptable from my point of view that somebody will say: ‘Hey, that will cause the non-Jewish to kill you, the Muslims to kill you.’ That’s ridiculous,” Halevi said.
“I don’t know if it’s a very central issue in Likud, but I hope more and more people understand that this is the war for Al Aqsa, as they call it themselves,” he continued, noting that Hamas termed its invasion and massacre in southern Israel 10 months ago “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”
“So they understand that this is a religious war. If we hide this dimension, we are only causing it to increase more and more. And we need to say, Okay, this is a religious war,” he said.
Failing to achieve Israel’s objectives
Halevi has also disagreed with Netanyahu on a variety of other issues, especially on how the war in Gaza is being waged and on the conditions necessary for Israel to sign a ceasefire-hostage release deal with Hamas.
Last Thursday, he was one of 10 Likud MKs who signed a letter to the prime minister making a number of demands, including that Israeli retain control over the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt. (Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted on this in recent weeks.)
In a previous missive weeks earlier, Halevi and other ruling party lawmakers stated that they would refuse to back the deal under discussion without significant changes. He also told the Knesset Channel that “the IDF has barely made any strategic achievement in the Gaza Strip.”
In an earlier telephone interview explaining his support for the letter, Halevi had asserted that Israel needs to establish full control over Gaza in order to prevent Hamas’s return to power and said that he would “not be part of a coalition that takes our soldiers out of Philadelphi.”
Continuing in this vein during the Knesset interview, Halevi argued that in order to defeat “a terror state” whose residents have undergone nearly two decades of “extreme indoctrination,” it is necessary to “hold the infrastructure,” especially relating to education and religion, in order to implement some sort of “de-radicalization” plan.
In addition, Israel needs to take control over “the energy, the gas… electricity and the food, the aid, and the education, the basic, the fundamental issues,” Halevi said. “Otherwise, you have thousands of new soldiers in the Hamas army,” because “Hamas is a product of the population.”
Accusing Israel’s senior military leadership of failing to understand the enemy and accepting “many problematic concepts,” Halevi argued that the army has failed to properly manage the operation in Gaza and implement the government’s goals.
He also had harsh words for Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the IDF’s military advocate general, who has recently come under attack from right-wing politicians over her decision to arrest reservists accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian terror suspect at the Sde Teiman detention facility.
According to Halevi, Tomer-Yerushalmi “revealed a lack of legal and military judgment and also a lack of national and political judgment in her decisions.”
Masked military policemen arresting the soldiers “in broad daylight” caused Israel a significant image problem, he complained.
“We woke up in the morning and we saw it in not only the Arab newspapers, but also in English newspapers all over the world that IDF soldiers are rapists,” he said — adding that wartime is “not a regular time. You can hurt your international status” and troops’ morale by taking such public action.
Disagreement but not revolt
As to how much fault lays with Netanyahu and the political echelon, Halevi said that while “of course, the government has a responsibility,” the way in which the IDF is fighting must be changed “from its roots.”
Recent months have seen several other Likud lawmakers publicly disagree with Netanyahu on a variety of issues and even buck him on important coalition legislation.
In June, Moshe Saada and Tally Gotliv scuttled a Shas-backed religious services bill, while Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein has refused to push government-backed measures extending reservists’ terms of service and regulating ultra-Orthodox enlistment through his committee without achieving what he calls a “broad consensus.”
Their activities do not appear to be part of a larger revolt against Netanyahu’s authority, however. Asked if he believes the prime minister is losing control of his coalition, Halevi responded by saying that “Bibi is a hero” for standing firm in the face of pressure from both the Biden administration and his own security chiefs.
Members of the coalition “understand that we need a victory, and all the other issues besides the war are less important, and we cannot break the coalition for them,” he said.
