Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir visited the highly sensitive Jerusalem Mosque Esplanade on Wednesday, October 8, proclaiming an Israeli “victory” at the site, which Hamas condemned as a “deliberate provocation.” Later that day, Saudi Arabia in turn condemned the visit.
The third holiest place in Islam, the esplanade, built on the ruins of the second Jewish temple destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans, is located in East Jerusalem, a sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel. For Jews, it is the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
“We are two years after the terrible massacre, here, on the Temple Mount, it is victory! In every house in Gaza there is an image of the Temple Mount, and today, two years later, we are victorious,” declared Itamar Ben Gvir in a video posted on his X account in reference to the posters on the esplanade, very popular among Palestinians.
The Jordanian Waqf, the Muslim foundation that manages the site, told AFP that at least “1,300 Jewish extremists” had visited the esplanade in the morning.
“The extremist Itamar Ben Gvir broke into the blessed Al Aqsa mosque today, at the head of groups of settlers, a deliberate provocation that coincides with a painful date,” commented the Islamist movement Hamas in a statement, referring to the clashes of October 8, 1990, during which more than fifteen Palestinians died in Jerusalem, some even on the esplanade.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, for its part, condemned the Israeli minister’s visit, calling it an “unacceptable provocation” and a “flagrant violation of the historical and legal status quo.”
The status quo of 1967
Under a status quo decreed in 1967 by Israel after its conquest of East Jerusalem (later annexed by Jordan), non-Muslims can go to the esplanade at specific times, without praying, but this rule is increasingly ignored by a growing number of nationalist Jews. If the site remains administered by Jordan, its access will be controlled by Israeli security forces.
This is at least the 11th time that Itamar Ben Gvir has visited the esplanade since the formation of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most right-wing in Israel’s history, at the end of 2022. After several of these visits, Benjamin Netanyahu published statements affirming that the status quo remained unchanged.
The arrival of Itamar Ben Gvir this Wednesday comes at a time when Jews celebrate Sukkot, one of the main holidays in the Hebrew calendar, but also in the midst of indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas with a view to ending the Gaza war.
The rabbinate prohibits the faithful from going to the esplanade for fear of violating the rules of religious purity, but Itamar Ben Gvir likes to come there to assert what he presents as Israel’s sovereignty over the place, at the very heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the subject of recurring tensions.
Each of their visits has sparked an international outcry and is seen as a casus belli by Hamas, which regularly invokes the preservation of the Muslim character of the esplanade as one of the justifications for its unprecedented attack on Israel that triggered the current war, on October 7, 2023.
Source: BFM TV
