Why Ben-Gvir's Al-Aqsa compound rhetoric is dangerous and disruptive

The latest flareup came this week after Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said in an interview with Army Radio that a synagogue should be built at the contested holy site. The call for Jews to pray at the compound is in violation of the 1967 Status Quo Agreement. In a sign of the severity of the development, the office of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli defense minister said that the status quo has not changed at Al-Aqsa. 

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said calls to undermine the status of Al-Aqsa aimed "to drag the region into a religious war that will burn everyone." 

But for many observers, the enforcement of the Al-Aqsa agreement has long been lacking. 

Background

The actual management of the site and visitation rights are carefully documented in the Status Quo Agreement. The Ottoman Era rule established a ban on non-Muslims entering Haram al-Sharif. After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, the area was controlled by Jordan until Israeli forces took control of it in 1967. Shortly after, Israel handed back control of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount compound to the Jordanian Waqf to avoid what many feared could develop into a holy war between Jews and Muslims around the flash-point site. The agreement banned non-Muslim prayer. 

Al Aqsa Mosque is also known as Al-Haram al-Sharif. It is a 144-dunum walled complex with gates that encompass it, the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic Museum, the Bab al-Rahma prayer location, administrative offices and courtyards that can hold over half a million worshipers. Al-Aqsa was built by the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik or his son al-Walid I. Regardless, the rough estimate of when the mosque was built is between 685 CE to 715 CE, the period of both caliph's reigns. Since then, and with the exception of 80 years under Crusader control, the entire mosque area has been under the management of Muslims. 

Reinforcing the status quo

The Hashemite family of Jordan are the custodians of the compound. In March 2013, Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah signed an agreement supporting the Hashemite custodianship of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.

After 1967, Israel’s top ultra-Orthodox rabbis agreed to keep Jews out of the Muslim site, which they believe is justified by the claim that the area is the remnant of the second Jewish temple and that any Jew setting foot on it would defile the holy terrain. This has put the ultra-Orthodox on a collision course with Ben-Gvir and Israel's religious nationalist camp; the latter has long advocated to expand Jewish prayer and presence on the site. 

A sign that still stands outside the Mughrabi gate forbids Jews from entering this holy site. However, during the past two decades, ultranationalist rabbis have permitted visits — albeit only to certain locations — with the advice of walking barefooted to avoid stepping on anything sacred with their shoes. 

For the Muslim managers of the mosque, the idea of visits by any non-Muslims to their holy site is welcomed so long as it is done according to conditions set by the Islamic Waqf, which allows groups of 15 non-Muslims on the premises and no prayer or religious worship. 

The Jordanian government employs nearly 1,000 guards and administrators. Al-Aqsa’s walled gates are guarded by two sets of powers. At every gate, armed Israeli Police are stationed, and closer to the gate, unarmed Waqf guards ensure that the Jerusalem Waqf Council’s regulations are respected. After the second intifada in 2000, Israeli Police removed the Muslim guards from the Mughrabi gate, which is now singularly controlled by the Israeli Police, who have been accused of failing to stop Jews from violating the status quo — including in recent weeks. Many in the Arab world refer to these Jews as "storming" the complex after failing to coordinate with the Waqf. 

During clashes between Israeli Police and Palestinians in 2014 after the holy site opened to Jewish visitors, former US Secretary of State John Kerry held a meeting between King Abdullah and Netanyahu. They reached an understanding that Israel visitors only enter in small groups, and Israel conceded that no radical individuals or repeat visitors be allowed to visit the site. 

According to the Islamic Waqf Council in Jerusalem and their hierarchical leadership in Jordan, Israel has regularly violated this understanding by allowing many to enter and allowed for the repeated entry of some radical individuals.

At times, an Israeli flag has been unfurled at the complex. Most of the time, the Israeli Police — with instructions directly from the office of the Israeli prime minister — have banned such violations. But that has changed in recent years with the rise of the most far-right government in Israeli history. Israeli Police have at times been accused of barring some Arab Israelis entry to the site in contravention of the Status Quo Agreement, including during Ramadan this year.