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Another update.
Why Israel is closer than ever to building the Third Temple
With Al-Aqsa Mosque effectively divided between Muslims and Jews, Palestinians fear Israel's next move
Jewish prayers recited loudly in groups. Singing and dancing. Men prostrating themselves, faces pressed to the ground.
Israeli flags held aloft.
That was the scene inside
Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, during an Israeli raid
earlier this month.
A few years ago, such a display would have been unimaginable. But since 7 October 2023, everything has changed, say
Palestinians.
"There were terrifying numbers of people [Israeli settlers] present and some were important figures," Aouni Bazbaz, the director of international affairs at the Islamic Waqf, the organisation that administers Al-Aqsa Mosque, told Middle East Eye at the time.
"What happened… represents a pivotal stage aimed at forcibly imposing Jewish sovereignty over Al-Aqsa Mosque and dividing it spatially between Muslims and settlers,” he added.
Al-Aqsa Mosque, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, has stood at the centre of Israel’s decades-long
occupation of Palestine.
For Palestinians and Muslims worldwide, the mosque symbolises the struggle for freedom, identity and independence.
For many Israelis, it is the site where the third Jewish temple is soon to rise.
For decades, it has been governed by an international arrangement upholding its religious status as an exclusively Islamic shrine.
But since the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israelis have been gradually eroding that status through increasing restrictions on Palestinian and Muslim access, while expanding Jewish presence and control.
Since 7 October, these efforts have intensified dramatically.
Today, as global attention remains fixed on
Israel’s genocide in Gaza and broader regional tensions, Al-Aqsa stands at a turning point.
Many Palestinians fear it is on the brink of losing its identity as a mosque and being turned into what they have long dreaded: a third Jewish temple.
Erosion of the status quo
In the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over Palestine at the time, established an arrangement governing the management of religious sites in Jerusalem.
This agreement became known as the
status quo, a set of rules and regulations now considered a binding international norm, which has long been accepted by world powers.
The arrangement stipulated that the entire 144,000-square-metre Al-Aqsa Mosque complex - including the Dome of the Rock, the silver-domed Qibli Mosque, and other buildings and gates - fall under Muslim administration.
For decades, this administration has been known as the Islamic Waqf, or religious endowment, which falls under the Jordanian custodianship of the site.
The rules are simple: only Muslims are allowed to pray inside the mosque, while non-Muslims may visit, but the Waqf decides when and how.
Control over the mosque, including its maintenance, security and excavations, remains the sole responsibility of the Waqf.
This authority, and by extension that of Amman, was formally recognised by Israel in the peace treaty signed with Jordan in 1994.
During Israel's occupation of Jerusalem, up until 2000, breaches of the status quo were few and far between, as Israeli authorities feared global Muslim backlash in the event of any assault on the mosque.
However, a raid by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon on the mosque in 2000, accompanied by hundreds of armed guards, dramatically shifted the situation.
The raid sparked the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising, and from that point, Israeli authorities began to violate the status quo on a much larger scale.
First, Israeli forces started regularly deploying inside the mosque courtyards and at its gates, instituting restrictions on who was allowed to enter, such as banning men under 40 and Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
At the same time, Israeli authorities stripped the Waqf of its authority to control visits, opening the door for what Palestinians describe as raids by ultranationalist Israelis, often carried out under the protection of heavily armed guards.
These raids are organised by groups known as Temple Mount activists, which consist of Israeli organisations calling for the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the construction of a Third Temple in its place.
Additionally, since 2000, Israel has openly conducted excavations under Al-Aqsa Mosque, another significant violation of the status quo.
New normal
For the next two decades, Israel entrenched these new violations, transforming them into a new reality.
Initially,
Israeli settler raids were limited in both number and duration. However, over the years, they grew steadily in scale and frequency.
In 2009, more than 5,000 settlers participated in these raids. By 2019, that number had risen to 30,000.
By 2017, the raids became a daily occurrence, excluding Fridays and Saturdays, following a strict schedule akin to the five daily Muslim prayers. One shift takes place in the morning, after the Muslim dawn (Fajr) prayer, with another in the afternoon, following the Muslim noon (Dhuhr) prayer.
This gradual but firm control over visitation times and access is what Palestinians have long warned was the ultimate goal.
They argue that Israeli authorities are creating a new reality, turning the mosque - a site considered solely Islamic - into a shared space for both Muslim and Jewish prayer.
As a result, these numerous violations have sparked regular Palestinian popular and armed resistance within Jerusalem and beyond.
In May 2021, Israeli incursions into the mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which disrupted special Islamic rituals, were a major catalyst for the 11-day uprising that spread across historic Palestine, including a war with Hamas in Gaza.
Two years later, the Palestinian movement cited these violations as one of the primary reasons behind its 7 October attack, which it called the "Flood of Al-Aqsa". During the assault, Palestinian fighters killed nearly 1,200 Israelis and took 251 more captive.
This led to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, in which Israeli forces have killed more than 62,000 Palestinians and left the besieged enclave in ruins and on the verge of famine.
The escalation has had a domino effect, leading to devastating Israeli assaults in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
Under the guise of these increasing regional tensions, the violations at Al-Aqsa have continued unabated.
They have only worsened, with diminishing international attention or response.
voxday.net
