Has Israel Changed the Status Quo on the Temple Mount?

The Arab League has now charged Israel with changing the status quo by allowing Jews to pray at the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount. A report on this dangerous lie can be found here: “Israel Is ‘Preserving the Status Quo’ at Jerusalem’s Holy Site,” i24 News, April 23, 2022:

Israel emphasized earlier this week a long-standing ban on Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque compound, rejecting an Arab League accusation that it was deviating from the site’s status quo.…

Israel, however, said there is no change in its long-standing ban on Jewish prayer at the flashpoint site.

Israel is maintaining the status quo, which includes the freedom of prayer for Muslims and the right to visit for non-Muslims. The police enforce the ban on Jewish prayer,” said Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

The charge by the Arab League that Israel now allows Jews to pray on the Temple Mount is a flat-out lie. There has been no change in the policy; visitors to the Temple Mount can see for themselves that any Jew who prays openly or silently will be promptly escorted off the Temple Mount by Israeli police. This extraordinary accommodation to Muslim sensibilities began in 1967, just as soon as Israel came into possession of the Temple Mount, and has remained in force ever since. At the holiest site in Judaism, Jews are not allowed to pray. Indeed, they can only visit Temple Mount during a four-hour period each day, and then only on five days of the week.

“Over the last few years, Israel is not allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount during the last 10 days of Ramadan to prevent any friction,” he said.…

After the blanket prohibition on Jewish prayer, aloud or silent, and the limiting of the times when Jews may visit the Temple Mount, the Israelis in recent years have added another restriction. Given the Arab propensity to violence during Ramadan, and particularly in its last weeks, the Israeli government has imposed even stricter limits on Jews. This year, as for the last few years, Jews will not be permitted to visit the Temple Mount at all during the last ten days of Ramadan. What the Arab League ought to have done, instead of falsely charging Israel with allowing Jews to pray on Temple Mount, is to have acknowledged, with gratitude, the prohibition on Jewish prayer that the Israeli government continues to enforce and, furthermore, to have recognized that Israel has now gone a step further, in preventing Jews even from visiting the holiest site in Judaism during part of Ramadan, so as not to disturb Muslims at a particularly sensitive time.

Tensions have increased in Jerusalem for exactly one reason: many hundreds of Arab rioters, whipped up by incitement from the leaders of both the PA and Hamas, on April 15 began an unprovoked assault, with rocks and Molotov cocktails, on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, and at the Israeli police on the Temple Mount. The Israeli police have done nothing more than to disarm and arrest those violent rioters in order to protect Jews at the Western Wall who have been under potentially lethal attack. The Israeli police will stop their own efforts just as soon as the Arab rioters stop their violent attacks against both the police and the Jews at the Western Wall. They have no interest in “seizing” or “occupying” the Al-Aqsa Mosque, only in “disarming” it by removing the weapons stockpiled within. Israel will continue to prohibit Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and to severely limit when Jews can visit, acts of self-abnegation designed to accommodate Muslim sensibilities. And still the Arabs will insist that it is they who are the aggrieved party. There is no end to this.

The West Bank’s Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the US representatives that Israel is responsible for the escalation, while the Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told them the Jewish state was working to “preserve the status quo.”

The “escalation” in violence began when the PA claimed, several weeks ago, that Israel intended to “seize” the Al-Aqsa mosque, hoping thereby to whip up Arab rioters at the Al-Aqsa compound, which is exactly what happened. Israel has not initiated any violence, but has merely sought to contain the Arab violence — rocks, Molotov cocktails — that endangered the lives of Jews praying at the Western Wall. Israel has maintained the status quo, preventing Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, limiting the days and hours of Jewish visitors, and banning outright, for the remaining weeks of Ramadan, any Jewish visitors to the Mount. How much more accommodating must the Israelis be to Muslim sensibilities before the Arab lies and violence will stop?