The Temple Mount / Al-Aqsa: Heading Towards Loss of Control? – A symposium presenting Dr. Amnon Ramon’s study

Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount has been changing in recent years. The primary element laid out in the 1967 ‘status quo’ arrangement by Moshe Dayan and the government – prohibition of prayer by Jews on the Temple Mount – is changing before our eyes. The number of Jews making their pilgrimage to the Temple Mount is on the rise, while religious rites there (including prayer and Torah lessons) are gradually shaping a new reality. These changes also impact police and Israeli authority policy toward the Jewish pilgrims and their ritual activity. 

The change expresses deep processes taking place among Jews, primarily from the national-religious sector, pertaining to the place the Temple Mount and the Holy Temple hold in their religious consciousness and practice, antithetical to the position of the Chief Rabbinate and prominent Haredi decisors who prohibit Jews from going up to the Temple Mount. Changes are taking place concurrently on the Muslim side as well – the influence of the Jordanian establishment, Palestinian Authority representatives and the Waqf leadership on affairs at the Temple Mount / al-Aqsa is declining, while the power of the East-Jerusalemites and local groups operating ‘bottom up’ is on the rise.

At the symposium, Dr. Amnon Ramon, researcher at the Jerusalem Institute, presented his study on the changes, processes and trends taking place on the Temple Mount from 2015 until today. The presentation of Dr. Ramon’s study was followed by a panel discussion by experts on the subject. The panel members presented possible interpretations to the changes taking place and their consequences in the local, Middle Eastern and international arenas.

Event summary

The evening opened with a lecture by Dr. Amnon Ramon on his new study: The Temple Mount / al-Aqsa: Nearing a loss of control?

Dr. Ramon began studying the issue in the 1990s, in the period of the Oslo Accords. Even back then segments of the national-religious sector had already begun to take interest in the Temple Mount, challenging the religious prohibition of visiting the Temple Mount by actual steps on the ground. The first time Dr. Ramon gave a talk on the subject in an Israeli-Palestinian forum, he was told by the Palestinian representatives at the end of the lecture that they were in shock. They hadn’t understood until that moment what the bonds tying Jews to the Temple Mount were, and in effect, they had interpreted the fact that Jews did not go up to the Temple Mount at all (due to religious prohibition) as a renunciation of Israeli-Jewish sovereignty at the holy site.

Since the 1990s, these changes within the national-religious sector have been gaining ground. Many rabbis permit visits by Jews to ‘permitted areas’ (from a perspective of Jewish religious law) on the Temple Mount and the number of pilgrims to the site is growing from year to year. The change expresses deep processes taking place among Jews, primarily from the national-religious sector, pertaining to the place the Temple Mount and the Holy Temple hold in their religious consciousness and practice, antithetical to the position of the Chief Rabbinate and prominent Haredi decisors who prohibit Jews from going up to the Temple Mount. Changes are taking place concurrently on the Muslim side as well – the influence of the Jordanian establishment, Palestinian Authority representatives and the Waqf leadership on affairs at the Temple Mount / al-Aqsa is declining, while the power of the East-Jerusalemites and local groups operating ‘bottom up’ is on the rise. When decisions are not made at the highest government levels (the Prime Minister, in the case of the Temple Mount), processes transpire ‘from the bottom up’. Jewish groups involved with Temple Mount and the Temple issues have succeeded (with partial support by the political establishment) in improving conditions for pilgrimage; they have even been able to increase cooperation with the police, who play a crucial role in administering the Mount. In many cases, in the absence of clear guidelines from the political echelon, the police force becomes the primary decision-maker for the Mount. Decisions by police commanders could have an impact on much broader circles in the entire Middle Eastern region. A overall look at the processes taking place on both sides – the Jewish and the Muslim – regarding the Temple Mount / al-Aqsa, reflects a common element that could have far-reaching consequences: established institutions – the Chief Rabbinate, the Waqf, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and to some degree also the Israeli government – are in a trap, with pressure coming from below by both Jews and Muslims. On the Israeli side, one of the field players, Itamar Ben-Gvir and members of the Otzma Yehudit faction, have become part of the Israeli establishment following the elections. The difficulty that decision-makers have in making decisions pertaining to the extremely sensitive holy site makes the arena into a playing field of ‘field players’ who to a large degree drag along with them the institutions, which are finding it hard to withstand the pressure and carry out balanced policy. This dynamic, characterizing other holy sites as well, could result in the establishment losing control of affairs at the Mount, primarily during times of crisis. Decision-makers must be fully aware of these processes, holding them in plain sight as the Ramadan and Passover holiday approach.

The talk was followed by a panel discussion in which other participants responded to Dr. Ramon’s lecture – 

Nir Hasson – Haaretz journalist, the panel moderator, discussed the case of the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul, which had been converted to a museum by Ataturk and has since been reclassified as an active mosque. Nir contested Dr. Ramon on the sway held by Israeli politicians and thinks that it is greater than what Dr. Ramon expressed (on the Jewish side). In 2013, a process within the Likud and Bayit Yehudi parties reached fruition, where several MKs entered the Knesset (for example: Moshe Feiglin, Miri Regev and later Yehuda Glick) for whom the Temple Mount was high up on their list of priorities and activities. Hasson recalled the days before 2015 when the District Commander could close the Temple Mount to Jews; today this would not be possible. Steps taken by politicians, Jewish groups and the changes mentioned by Dr. Ramon have also contributed to this.

Dr. David Koren, CEO of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, maintains that the way processes on the Temple Mount are typically understood is that decisions come from above and make their way down. Dr. Ramon’s research has shown movement in the bottom-up direction as well. The process is bidirectional. What happens on the ground shapes policy, and conversely. From his personal experience, the Temple Mount is not a site that is not administered at the state level. The issue sits squarely on the Prime Minister’s desk. Heads of the security branches are also aware of what is happening on the Temple Mount. On the Muslim side, interesting processes are taking place, too: growing interest by Hamas and the activities of Shabab Al-Aqsa – the East Jerusalem youth – in everything that is taking place on the Temple Mount. From a Palestinian perspective, the Temple Mount is all they have been left with in Jerusalem, and they must defend it at almost any price. It is also an issue that unifies all East Jerusalem Palestinians. Another important phenomenon is the involvement of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel in the goings-on at the Temple Mount, under the slogan of ‘al-Aqsa is in danger’.

Dr. Sarina Chen – addressed processes perceived as invisible: the impact of technology on Jewish visits to the Mount. The digital world, online updates on both sides – Palestinian and Jewish – make recruiting large groups for Temple Mount action very easy. Each side against the other. The digital world also challenges previously existing hierarchies. The Jewish religious ruling of 1967 prohibiting Jews from going up to the Temple Mount was accepted by the majority of the religious Jewish public. Today, however, accessibility to diverse viewpoints and the ability to see a variety of religious rulings by rabbis on social media has allowed the hierarchy to be broken down. Furthermore, while the police enforce the prohibition of entering the Temple Mount with prayer books, pilgrims instead use prayer book apps on their smartphones, allowing them to circumvent this rule. There is a tight link between technological development and manifestations of faith and relationship to a divine being, as may be seen in two biblical stories such as the Tower of Babel (reflecting challenging God) and Noah’s Ark (reflecting rescue by God). Another issue is the rights discourse adopted by some Temple Mount activists such as Yehuda Glick who found an audience in a broad base of communities, and also the penetration of Temple Mount activists into the heart of the Israeli establishment, with Itamar Ben-Gvir and Yitzhak Kroizer (son of Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer, Rabbi of Mitzpe Yeriho and head of Yeshivat Haraayon Hayehudi, founded by Meir Kahane, in which Ben-Gvir studied) as Members of Knesset in the Otzma Yehudit party and MK Simcha Rothman assisting the Temple Mount activists on the legal side.

Ami Meitav (tour guide and author of “Jerusalem – One square kilometer“) – The Temple Mount is in fact under discussion at the highest echelons in Israel (as Dr. David Koren stated), but is there a real dialogue on the question of what we, the sovereign representatives of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, really want to do with that place? Ami agrees that the police play an important role in the Temple Mount – more than any other authority. As far as Israeli control on the Temple Mount, we now have much greater ability for control and oversight, compared to the period prior to 2015. A visit to the Temple Mount in those years was quite an unpleasant experience. Murabitat men and women would provoke Jewish pilgrims. Since the end of 2015 they have been expelled from the Mount and the experience of Jewish pilgrims has become calmer. In the past, new mosques were arranged in Solomon’s Stables and underneath al-Aqsa (in the 1990s) with no oversight whatsoever. In those years there really was a loss of control. Today the situation is much improved. The police and security authorities maneuver between the Jewish side and the Muslim side and are managing the place reasonably well, although it is difficult to predict the direction these processes will take going forward.

Dr. Ramon summed up the evening by stating that Ami Meitav’s analysis sounds quite rational and convincing, but the dynamics of these processes in a holy site that arouses such passions capable of impacting the entire city of Jerusalem, large portions of the Israeli Arab population and beyond, are unpredictable. A change on the Temple Mount to the benefit of the Jewish side could impact Israel’s relations with Jordan, the UAR, Morocco, Turkiye and other Muslim nations; it could also impact Israel’s relations with the United States. But recall that there have already been ‘explosive events’ surrounding the Temple Mount in the past – in 1990, in 1996, in September 2000 after Ariel Sharon’s visit and during the Ramadan in 2021 just prior to the Guardian of the Walls operation. The new complex reality formed at the Temple Mount – including prayer of Jews – must be studied further. Contrary to the declarations of politicians, there is an ongoing change to the status quo.

Pictures from the event