T. Belman. The author makes some very important points. Essentially to accept the “status quo” is to accept the domination of Sharia. Islam has no right to dictate who can come on the Temple Mount or pray there. They have such a right in their own mosques. But the Temple Mount was created by Jews for Jews and the Muslims didn’t acquire suzerainty over it by building their two mosques on it.
The fact that al-Aqsa is not in danger, does not mean that the status quo on the Temple Mount should remain constant. To the contrary, it must change on both strategic and moral grounds; and for the sake of true Israeli-Palestinian peace.
All of Israel’s leaders, Including Prime Minister Netanyahu and the opposition leaders, as well as senior officials and most of Israel’s commentators and journalists, keep on reiterating that Israel has no intention of changing the “status quo” on the Temple Mount. They emphasize over and over again that the Palestinian campaign to wit “al-Aqsa is in danger” – is a modern blood libel.
It clearly is a modern blood libel.
When the Jordanian-Palestinian Jerusalem newspaper, al-Quds reappeared in 1968, it noted with satisfaction that in Ramadan of that year 600 Muslims came to pray at al-Aqsa. In July 2015 during Ramadan, 47 years after al-Aqsa purported has been in danger under Israeli rule, it reported (along with Hamas media outlets) that 300,000 Muslims did so.
“Al-Aqsa is in danger” has just about the same validity as the assertion that Israel is involved in ethnic cleansing in the territories. The Arab populations of Judea and Samaria/the West Bank and Gaza have grown at least four-fold since 1967 and so has the standard of living – which explains in large part why the number of Muslims praying in al-Aqsa has grown exponentially.
However, that al-Aqsa is not in danger does not mean that the status quo on the Temple Mount should remain. To the contrary, it must change on both strategic and moral grounds.
Strategically, the status quo must change because the demand that Jews (and Christians as well) be given the right to pray on the Temple Mount is interlocked with Israel’s justifiable demand that the Palestinians accept Israel as nation state of the Jewish People.
Most Palestinians oppose both Jewish prayer on Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount) and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state for the same ideological and theocratic reason. In their view, Jews can be no more than ahl al-dhimmi, a protected but subordinate religious minority under the protection of Muslims, and not a sovereign people equal to the Muslim Palestinian state and its nationals.
Only if the Palestinians accept the right of parity and religious freedom on the Mount in Jerusalem, and recognize Israel as nation state of the Jewish People will the War of Independence that Israel fought in 1948 be truly over.
Jamal Zahalkah MK, who is ideologically linked to the Marxist ideology of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is for this reason so insistent on defending the exclusivity of the Muslim hold on the Temple Mount. He is convinced that if Israel ever exercises effective sovereignty on the Temple Mount, this might mean that Israel is here to stay.
There is another reason why the status quo on the Temple Mount should change. It starts with the realization that Israel is facing a situation of protracted conflict with the Palestinians; a conflict that will have to be managed for the long term. In this situation, it is critically important that the Palestinians realize that Israel’s managing of the conflict does not necessarily mean keeping the status quo. After all, if the Palestinians have nothing to lose from a protracted conflict, why should they move to moderate their positions?
In short, they will never be peace if a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount is seen as a provocation or desecration of the holy place.
Then there is the moral argument. As a modern democratic state, Israel must ensure equality and parity to all religious communities who deem Jerusalem sacred. By opposing Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, Palestinian Authority politicians and Israel’s Arab MKs show their true colors as leaders driven more by theocratic conviction and anti-Jewish prejudice than anything resembling democratic and liberal convictions.
This is of course nothing new. Many Arab MKs and Palestinian leaders exhibited sycophantic behavior towards Arab state tyrants before the Arab Spring. Even the most liberal of Jewish Israelis wondered how former Azmi Bishara MK, a professor of philosophy who described himself as a liberal, defied Israeli law to attend and eulogize Hafez al-Assad, one of the worse tyrants of his day. Bishara then went on to spy for Hizballah, the Iranian-created and backed terror movement hardly known for its liberalism, and fled from Israel.
The demand that the Palestinians (and even more so, Israel’s Arab citizens) accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people is in keeping with the description of the Jewishness of the Jewish democratic state. The demand that the Palestinians accept parity on the Temple Mount is a test of accepting the state’s democratic nature.
Ultimately, these demands are for the Palestinians’ own good. The Palestinian national movement will continue to fail if it remains wedded to its theocratic, anti-democratic frame of mind. The current, radical ideological Arab predispositions go a long way in explaining the decline of the Arab and Muslim world as well as Arab and Muslim state failure and internecine violence; and they spell special disaster for the Palestinians.
Alas, 87 years after the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, coined the false accusation that “al-Aqsa is in danger,” young Palestinians driven by blind theocratic hatred still run amok in the streets of Jerusalem to kill Jews. Their behavior is a reflection of the collective disaster of the Palestinian political movement, and the tragedy of radical Palestinian nationalism that Israel is saddled with.
Prof. Hillel Frisch, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is a professor of political science and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University. Cambridge University Press has just published his book Israel’s Security and its Arab Citizens.
lol…..We all have Ted’s pic on our posts. Ted….I didn’t know you have so many aliases.
Some day the mosques will be gone and the third temple will be rebuilt. In the meantime? BB is making too many overtures to the Palestinians. They probably know that they will be gone at some point so they incite the Jewish people in the meantime.
The Christians are getting restless….even more restless than the Jews….
I don’t have Teds pic…..everyone else does tho.
The Muslim and Occidental worlds are both stuck with Goebbels propaganda.
this is pathetic that the prime minister of israel goes begging the hashemite anti semitic dwarf king and Abbas to please take back the Mount and resume attacking Jews. restoring the status quo is restoring and legalizing the abuse of Jews and anti semitism.
Is israel that bad off that the PM has to beg abdullah and abbas
insane to give these anti semites control to throw stones at jews at the wall and to ban jews from the MOunt in a Jewish state.
why doesnt BB cordon the areas and search house to house in the arab areas? why not bring the noise to the arab areas? why is Israel always the weak player after winning all the wars…… the solution is to drive out the anti semites. why should jews make aliyah to a jewish home where jews are attacked by muslims? Looks like abbas and abdullah are BB’s boss and he is begging them for help, willing to sacrifice jews to muslim abuse and attacks for their “help”.
Perhaps he is in too deep with his understandings and does not want to lose their “friendship”. Perhaps he is afraid of Jordan canceling the treaty… but shouldn’t the loser be afraid of the winner canceling a treaty? If jordan canceled the opportunity would arise to drive the pals across the river.
what is proven at the mount is that the corrupt hashemite in jordan has abused their treaty with israel by appointing anti semitic wakfs to incite murder against jews, destroy jewish heritage at the site, attack and abuse jews on the mount and at the wall. the jordan pig king must be held responsible and the agreement suspended. Any jewish gov which seeks the status quo of muslims attacking and abusing Jews should be deposed as an illegitimate government. Even when the jordan pigs were given a gift in error, they abused that idiotic gift. There is no reason to honor jew killers and abusers….. just as there would have been no reason to honor hitler. A disgusting and scandalous state of affairs perpetuated by a sick leftist and a sick religious culture of stockholm syndrome Jews captive to diaspora masters.
it is absurd that in a Jewish state the muslim anti semites are given authority over the most holy Jewish site.
This article seeks parity with the muslims for the Jews to pray on their holy site, but the muslims should be under jewish soveriegnty. There is no reason why their mosque is not, like other mosques in Israel, under Israeli sovereignty and the mosque imam is like every other imam in Israeli mosques. Dayan made a massive error of judgement. Are there not churches and mosques in Israel that are under the national sovereignty with just their imam to run their mosque?
to add insult to injury the filthy anti semites have used their undeserved gift from the fool jews to harass and attack jews…. not only on the top of the mount but also at the western wall.
Imagine that all these jews made aliya to israel in order to be attacked and abused by muslims with the encouragement and facilitation of a so called Jewish government. A Jew would be safer in germany or france than at the temple mount.
Why would jews even give any respect or freedom to these congenital anti semites. The first time they threw stones at jews the jewish police should have beaten them all bloody and permanently crippled them all. The BS rabbis that support the govs in this jew abusing venture are the major part of the problem. If instead of supporting the continuing attacks and abuse of jews by muslims they gathered their flocks to block the entrance to the mount daily with hundreds of thousands the muslim pollution would end. End the irrelevant and unnecessary mount sovereignty to the muslims and Jordan and render the situation the same as any religious structure in any other nation. A synagogue in a muslim nation would not be giving sovereignty to Israel to oversee it, and neither a church. I know of no other nation who gave sovereignty over their holiest site to a foreign nation.
There is no reason to continue this error simply becuase the disgusting anti semites and the disgusting dwarf hashemite stooge are making noises. They make noise and trouble even if everything is perfect. The disrespect of jews by muslims should be answered only with bullets and nightsticks. No treaty can be observed which results in Jews being abused in Israel by muslims….insane. Of course the muslims and jordan demand it….becuase idiotic insane jews gave it to them in the first place after winning the war.
bad timing; Jordan would explode
The anti-Semitic apartheid regime is doomed.
It lacks moral and legal legitimacy and discrimination against Jews cannot be defended on the grounds that to grant them equal rights would upset Jew-hating Arabs.
An unjust situation can only be maintained by force. Maybe Netanyahu and the chief honchos of the Israel Police who give him bad advice, don’t understand that people won’t put up with it.
Arresting and jailing them for the “crime” of prayer only reveals the bankruptcy of Israel’s selective regime of Arab-pandering on the Temple Mount.
For the good of the Jewish people, the State Of Israel and the world, the status quo must go and the sooner the better, every one will benefit.