It took less than a week for Israel’s new far-right government to become embroiled in its first incident abroad.
The cause of a 15-minute layover Tuesday through Israel’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to the compound of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, home to Judaism’s holiest site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, and the third holiest site in Islam. known to Muslims as the Noble Shrine, or Haram al-Sharif. Ben-Gvir did not use his scale in to pray at the site, which is forbidden to Jews by devout law but which he and others have long advocated.
However, the move was perceived as a planned provocation, threatening to upset the sensitive prestige quo at one of the Middle East’s most volatile holy sites. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coveted the UAE, who condemned Ben-Gvir’s scale in as a “grave and provocative violation. “The UN Security Council has scheduled an emergency consultation to discuss the incident, which will take a position on Thursday.
To perceive why Ben-Gvir aroused so much controversy, it is first useful to perceive the tenuous prestige quo at the holy site, why Jews are not allowed to pray there and their role in the afterlife and, if the Israeli government is not careful, long-term violence.
An agreement was reached after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel took East Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif) and the West Bank. Under an agreement with neighboring Jordan, which continues its historical guard of the holy site, non-Muslims can visit it. However, only Muslims can pray there.
This prestige quo has not undermined devout Jewish practices. According to Jewish law, Jews are forbidden to set foot on the site, let alone pray there, in part because the site is too sacred to be trampled; Others argue that those wishing to make a stopover will have to go through certain devout arrangements before doing so. But Israelis are more divided than the rabbinical government on this issue, and more excessive nationalist voices like Ben-Gvir have called for greater Jewish access. to the site, adding the right to pray there.
In the past, Netanyahu’s position on the holy site has been described as follows: “Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims on the Temple Mount. But recent trends suggest that the Israeli government’s commitment to maintaining the prestige quo is faltering. As the crusade for Jewish prayer at the once-marginal holy site becomes more common, Israeli police have reportedly begun quietly easing restrictions on Jewish prayer at the compound. Some have even been seen accompanying prayer teams at the site.
But tensions on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, like the Israeli-Palestinian clash in general, are not better understood as a devout clash, but as a territorial clash. The holy site has a representative of who controls Jerusalem (the eastern part of which remains occupied under foreign laws and which Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital) and the wider confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Ben-Gvir’s surely had nothing to do with piety,” Seidemann says. “It had everything to do with adhering to the Arabs and Palestinians and showing them who the boss is and courting their base. “
Palestinians regard Al Aqsa and the Golden Dome of the Rock alongside it as a symbol of Palestinian identity, as well as a reminder of their aspiration for a capital in East Jerusalem in a long-term state.
While Ben-Gvir’s resolve to stop at the site is not necessarily unexpected to Palestinians, for whom Ben-Gvir is widely known as a Jewish supremacist and provocateur, it is nevertheless indicative of a broader trend of incitement against Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Territories. .
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“Ben-Gvir has explicitly said that his priority is to replace the prestige quo agreement at Jerusalem’s holy sites, so when he goes to visit them, we can only assume that it’s a nod in that direction, which is with that purpose in mind,” says Khaled Elgindy, director of the Middle East Institute’s Palestine and Israeli-Israeli Affairs Program. The worst-case scenario, he adds, is that Ben-Gvir manages to normalize such movements to the point that it is no longer considered a big problem. “They’re like deals,” Elgindy says, referring to the seizure of Palestinian land for an Israeli settlement in the occupied territories. Space through space, path through path. This is how the prestige quo is eroded.
The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif has long been regarded as a powder keg, and for good reason. “Virtually every single outbreak of violence in Jerusalem that I can think of has erupted in one form or another as a result of a genuine or perceived risk to the viability of the Al Aqsa holy space,” Seideman says. Then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s scale at the site in 2000 is remembered as the cause of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, which lasted several years. The most recent violence, such as the 11-day clash between Israel and the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, was preceded by an Israeli police raid on Al Aqsa in the holy month of Ramadan. “It’s a trigger,” Seidemann says.
Even if Netanyahu sought to defuse tensions and repair the prestige quo, it is no longer transparent whether he can do so. Unlike previous governments, Netanyahu is now beholden to his far-right partners for keeping his fledgling government alive. Netanyahu, who faces years of long, unresolved corruption trials, won his election last year with Ben-Gvir and other far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties. If you lose your womb, you may also lose power. This incident showed that Netanyahu would possibly be in the highest position, but he is not the only one in power.
“What is new in this scenario is the shameless declaration of ultranational triumphalism,” says Seidemann. aspect and tinderbox in the West Bank. What can go wrong?