Israel is taking advantage of the war on Gaza to exert control over the al-Aqsa Mosque compound and prevent Palestinians from visiting. With the month of Ramadan set to start, Israeli authorities intend to tighten restrictions even further.
Temple Movement activists are trying to enter the Aqsa compound to slaughter goats and challenge the Muslim presence in the holy site. Palestinian worshippers remaining in the mosque during Ramadan are resisting.
On April 4 and 5, Israeli forces attacked Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa compound, and rights groups say more than 400 were arrested. Palestinians from the river to the sea are rising up in outrage.
Itamar Ben Gvir wants to normalize Jewish worship at the Al-Aqsa compound as a precursor to full Israeli control over the holy site, much like Baruch Goldstein’ massacre at the Ibrahimi Mosque brought full Israeli control over that part of Hebron.
It is hardly farfetched to assume that the al-Aqsa compound might suffer the same fate — where a particularly violent set of events would facilitate further Israeli takeover.
Itamar Ben Gvir’s raid of the Al Aqsa compound has strained the Abraham Accords and made it harder for Arab states to justify continued normalization with Israel.
These increasingly provocative actions by Israel don’t merely raise serious concerns for the UAE and other Abraham Accords participants; it also raises worries anew in Egypt and, especially, Jordan. Both countries have maintained long term peace accords with Israel, against the wishes of the vast majority of their citizens.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Jewish supremacist who serves as police minister in the new Jewish supremacist government of Israel, today made a provocative visit to the “Temple Mount” — the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem — that ought to alarm the world. Some Jewish Israeli extremists, including some in Ben-Gvir’s camp, actually want to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine. These extremist views are not typically represented in the western media.
More than 2000 Israeli Jews in the settler movement prayed on the Haram al-Sharif in recent weeks in violation of international agreements, and the government turned a blind eye. Because it is beholden to the right wing. And Labor and Meretz members of the coalition will stomach it all because they are finally in power and when Netanyahu disappears, they will be “in the desert again for God knows how long,” Michael Koplow says.
The State of Israel is responsible for upholding the status quo in Jerusalem, and guaranteeing the sanctity of the Haram al-Sharif and the dignity of its Muslim worshippers. Violently disrupting Ramadan prayers, beating unarmed worshippers and intimidating Muslims in Jerusalem is absolutely not the way of peace. We call on the State of Israel to immediately commit to abstaining from any further violations of the Waqf’s authority on the Haram al-Sharif. — A letter to Illinois Muslims from 13 rabbis of T’ruah.
“We deplore the Israeli government’s decision to introduce senseless violence to a prayer space. There was no need for the violence we witnessed. This situation
could have been defused peacefully. This Ramadan/Easter/Passover Israel betrayed its trust with the world’s Muslims, Christians and Jews.” From JVP rabbis’ statement on the fourth day of Passover.
Former ambassador David Friedman says that Judaism is Zionism. “So if you do not support the state of Israel you do not support Judaism, therefore you are antisemitic.”
Then Friedman seemed to echo Ben Shapiro’s call for building a synagogue on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in occupied Jerusalem, though he said the last time he did so, he’d “started a riot.” The two extremists spoke at an event kicked off by the Florida governor, who is considered a likely presidential candidate.