Far-right minister says Israel ‘responsible’ during visit to holy site in Jerusalem

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JERUSALEM (RockedBuzz via Reuters) – Israel’s far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Sunday visited a site in Jerusalem sacred to both Muslims and Jews and said Israel was “in charge”, drawing condemnation from Palestinians after months of growing tensions and violence.

The comments, during a morning visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, who know it as the Temple Mount, came days after groups of Jewish youths clashed with Palestinians and chanted racist slogans during a nationalist march through the Old City.

“I am happy to stand on the Temple Mount, the most important place for the people of Israel,” Ben-Gvir said during his visit to the compound, the most sensitive point between Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem and the site of repeated clashes.

In 2021 tensions around Al-Aqsa helped spark a 10-day war with the Islamist movement Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip. Hamas has repeatedly warned it would strike back at what it sees as Jewish incursions into the site, which is under Jordanian tutelage under a long-standing “status quo” agreement put in place to contain tensions.

“All threats from Hamas won’t help, we are in charge here in Jerusalem and throughout the Land of Israel,” Ben-Gvir said.

For Jews, the Temple Mount is the holiest place, where the Biblical King Solomon built the first Temple 3,000 years ago and where a second Temple was razed by the Romans. Today, the hilltop site is the third holiest in Islam, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque with the Dome of the Rock, believed to be where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

Under the status quo agreements, non-Muslims are allowed to visit the site in the heart of the Old City but are not allowed to pray. However, Jewish visitors increasingly defied the ban, more or less openly.

Palestinians see the challenge to the prayer ban as a provocation and fear Israel intends to take over the site.

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that “Ben-Gvir’s early raid, like thieves, on the courtyards of the Al-Aqsa mosque will not change reality and will not impose Israeli sovereignty over it.”

A Hamas spokesman said Israel would bear the consequences of Ben-Gvir’s “savage assault” on the mosque and called on Palestinians to step up their visits and “present themselves as a bulwark in the face of all attempts to taint it and make it Jewish. “

Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem, which includes Al-Aqsa and the adjacent Western Wall, a holy place of prayer for Jews, during the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel has since annexed East Jerusalem, in a move not recognized by the international community, and regards the entire city as its eternal and undivided capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

(Reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

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