OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel’s new far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir briefly visited Al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on Tuesday, prompting fierce condemnation from the Palestinians and several Arab countries.
“The Temple Mount is open to all,” Ben-Gvir said on Twitter, using the Jewish name for the site. Video footage showed him strolling at the periphery of the compound, surrounded by a heavy security detail and flanked by a fellow Orthodox Jew.
In an apparent effort to calm anger over the visit, an official in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the premier was fully committed to the site’s decades-old status quo allowing only Muslim worship there.
When asked about the visit, a White House National Security Council spokesperson said any unilateral action that jeopardizes the status quo of Jerusalem holy sites is unacceptable.
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An Israeli official said the 15-minute visit by Ben-Gvir, a senior member of Netanyahu’s new nationalist-religious cabinet, complied with an arrangement dating back decades that allows non-Muslims to visit on condition they do not pray.
He did not approach the mosque itself.
Although the visit at the flashpoint site passed without incident, it risks worsening frictions with Palestinians after an upsurge in violence in the occupied West Bank in the past year.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called on Palestinians to “confront the raids into Al Aqsa mosque”. He accused Ben-Gvir of staging the visit as part of a bid to turn the shrine “into a Jewish temple”.
Israel denies having such designs.
“Keeping the status quo, in recent years ministers have more than once ascended the Temple Mount, including a former Minister of Internal Security,” an official in Netanyahu’s office said, “Claims of a change in the status quo are groundless.”
Jordan, the custodian of Al Aqsa and whose peace deal with Israel is unpopular at home, summoned the Israeli ambassador and said the visit had violated international law and “the historic and legal status quo in Jerusalem”.
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