Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined thousands of Jewish extremists who stormed Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site on Thursday.
Escorted by armed police, they prayed, waved the Israeli flag and sang the national anthem in a provocative display of political power.
Under a fragile, decades-old agreement known as the status quo, non-Muslim prayer is banned at the site, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif compound and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Ben-Gvir has eroded the agreement in recent years through a series of inflammatory visits to the compound, and unilateral changes to rules for Jewish visitors, including allowing them to bring prayers and printed religious material to the site.
He installed an ideological ally as the head of the Jerusalem police force in January, smoothing the path to greater changes.
In a statement, the Palestinian ministry of religious endowments and affairs said: “These provocative practices, emanating from the highest political levels of the occupying government, seek to ignite a religious war throughout the entire region.”
Israelis prayed on Thursday in parts of the compound close to the al-Aqsa mosque and the seventh-century Dome of the Rock shrine.
Likud lawmaker Amit Halevi joined a group that raised Israeli flags and sang the national anthem, Haaretz reported, citing Israeli “Temple Mount” activists pushing for Jewish worship at the site.
In a social media post, Ben-Gvir wrote “we see enormous progress here,” and Jews praying there “feel like the owners”.
He has previously said he wanted to raise the Israeli flag at the compound and build a synagogue there.
Thursday is the Jewish holy day of Tisha B’Av, marking the destruction at the same site of the 10th-century BC first temple and the second temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in AD70.
Changes in the status quo agreement have historically driven conflict in Jerusalem and Palestine, with repercussions across the world. A visit by the then Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, in 2000 ignited the second Palestinian intifada, which lasted five years, and Hamas gave the name “al-Aqsa flood” to its attack on Israel in October 2023 that killed 1,200 Israelis and triggered the Gaza war, claiming it was provoked by Israeli violations at the Jerusalem mosque.
The prayers outside al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock are a “dangerous provocation” by extremists seeking to ignite a religious war, the Israeli activist group Peace Now said in a post on X. “This directly violates the fragile status quo, which bars non-Muslim prayer at the holy site.”
The Jordanian foreign ministry strongly condemned the storming and called on the international community “to take a firm stance obliging Israel, as the occupying power, to halt its ongoing violations against the Islamic and Christian sanctities in Jerusalem”.
The Islamic Waqf Department, which officially manages the compound, said 3,228 Israelis entered the compound during the morning period, Al Jazeera reported. Thousands more are expected in the afternoon
Earlier this year, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, publicly backed Jewish prayer at the site, claiming changes pushed by Ben-Gvir were coordinated with him.
Although his government has effectively torn up a key part of the fragile status quo, Netanyahu also insisted that Israel had not violated the agreement.
Overnight, thousands of people marched through areas of old Jerusalem near the compound, and some attacked Palestinians and vandalised a Muslim cemetery near the Lions’ Gate entrance, Haaretz reported. Police arrested 16 Jewish suspects over the violence.
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