The Temple Mount is a ticking time bomb

The battle for control over the Temple Mount is not solely to do with religion, but with power. We know that it has always been dangerous ground – politically, religiously, literally; all of the above – but such a label is even more fitting now. Israeli police clash with Palestinian, Muslim worshippers, hardline right-wing Jewish activists call for a full Jewish, Israeli sovereignty, and Jordan’s custodianship (as of the 1994 peace treaty) of the Mount is seemingly hanging by a single thread. That said, it must be noted that the Ramadan prayers occurring at the moment have been met with a relative peace.

The history of the Temple Mount is one of perpetual friction. It was the site of Solomon’s first Temple, later destroyed by the Babylonians in 587/586 BCE. The Second Temple that followed it, rebuilt in 516 BCE, was to become the very heart of Jewish religious life. It stood for nearly six centuries until the Romans razed it in 70 CE on the 9th-10th of Av during the Great Jewish Revolt, and in doing so sent the Jewish people into millennia of diaspora. Under Roman control, the Temple Mount became off-limits to Jews and was renamed Aaelia Capitolina.

Then came the early Islamic conquests in the 7th century, when Caliph Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. When he did so, he established the area as the third holiest place in Islam, and thus began the great religious wars. Jerusalem was to change hands repeatedly – crusaders seized it in 1099 and converted the Dome into a Christian church; Saladin reclaimed it for Islam just under a century later in 1187; the Ottomans ruled it from 1517 to 1917, and it did indeed see a relative stability, only for it to come crashing down with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Then came the British Mandate.

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan controlled the Temple Mount and barred Jews from praying there. In 1967, at the time of the Six-Day War, when Israeli paratroopers stormed East Jerusalem and raised the flag of Israel over the Dome of the Rock, then-Defence Minister Moshe Dayan ordered the flag removed. He handed day-to-day control of the Temple Mount to the Islamic Waqf, and thus began the status quo that remains in place today – technically under Israeli sovereignty, but managed by a Jordanian-controlled Islamic trust.

The status quo, though, is cracking. Jewish prayer on the Mount, whilst officially forbidden, is increasingly defied by religious Zionists who seek to reclaim Jewish rights to the site, of whom Ben Gvir is one. The Minister of National Security has repeatedly visited the site, only inflaming Palestinian-Muslim outrage. In 2022, one of his visits triggered riots across the West Bank and yet another round of rocket fire from Gaza.

Hamas and other Palestinian factions have framed any perceived Jewish encroachment on the Mount as a threat to Al-Aqsa – their calling on Muslims to defend it through so-called ‘resistance,’ crying ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ has been a call rallying for Palestinian violence for over a century. 1929 saw the Hebron Massacre, where 67 Jews were slaughtered following the spreading of false rumours that Jews planned to seize imminent control of the site. The Second Intifada erupted following Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Mount – along with a whole host of other factors – in 2000, leaving a blood trail of 3,000 Palestinians and a thousand Israelis dead.

Jewish traditionalists argue that the Mount represents not solely a historical memory, but the spiritual heart of exactly what Judaism connotes. Maimonides himself ascended the Temple Mount in the 12 century. The Temple Institute, a Jerusalem-based organization, has already reconstructed many of the sacred vessels used in Temple rituals, training kohanim in the proper rights so as to prepare for the day when the Temple can be rebuilt. Some rabbis, of whom prominent figures from the Religious Zionist movement are included, now advocate for rebuilding the Temple in its entirety, but such is an act that would almost certainly trigger a religious war of apocalyptic scale.

The Islamic world, though, sees this through a very different lens. The Dome of the Rock, completed in 691 CE, and the rest of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third holiest site in Islam, following Mecca and Medina. Such is the reason that any, even minor changes to the current state of affairs – Jewish prayer, increased police presence, however necessary – are met with a fierce resistance: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has warned in the past that Israel’s actions would, as he believes it to be, ‘ignite a religious war.’ This is a man who has also repeatedly accused Israel of plotting to destroy Al-Aqsa.

The cracks are not only between the Jews and the Muslims – indeed, the Israeli public itself is deeply divided over the Temple Mount, with secular Israelis often viewing attempts by their more religious fellows as reckless fanaticism. Religious Zionists, on the other hand, see it as a sacred obligation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has walked a fine line on the issue, and the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that Jews have a right to pray on the Mount – except for the fact that the government has consistently avoided enforcing such a ruling for fear of any political fallout.

There is, unfortunately, no clear solution: any attempts to impose rights for Jews to pray there will most likely, if not certainly, be met with yet another violent resistance. Any Israeli withdrawal will embolden Hamas and Hezbollah. The Mount has already claimed countless lives: thousands died there in the Roman seige of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Hundreds more in the Crusader conquests. Hundreds more in the riots of the 20th century. In 1990, during the third year of the First Intifada, Israeli police killed 17 Palestinian protesters after they threw stones at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, wounding a further 150 Palestinians and 20 Israeli civilians and police. In 2017, two Israeli policemen, Haiel Sitawe, 30, and Kamil Shnaan, 22, were killed by Arab gunmen at the site. Israel later installed metal detectors, which triggered riots across Jerusalem and a diplomatic crisis with Jordan. Why anyone would riot because they have been banned from bringing deadly weapons to a religious site is beyond me.

The Mount’s history is soaked in blood. The question, then, is not whether the Temple Mount will spark another flame that ignites another conflict, but rather when.