Israeli Ministry planning Temple Mount guided tours; National Security Council yet to respond

Right-wing activists protesting near the Temple Mount compound, August 2024

Jonathan Lis reports in Haaretz on 27 August 2024:

Israel’s Heritage Ministry is planning to launch organized tours for Israelis and tourists in the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa compound before Rosh Hashanah.

The budget to be allocated for this by the ministry may reach 2 million shekels (about $540,000). The ministry says that the purpose of this plan is to encourage visits to the mount by Jews and foreign tourists.

These visits will take place alongside tours led by private guides, and the ministry says their content will be monitored to avoid the introduction of “alternative facts and Palestinian narratives that were written in order to advance an anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish agenda.”

Even though the decision involves the allocation of government funding aimed at increasing the number of visitors to the compound, the National Security Council was not involved in this matter. The prime minister’s office said on Tuesday that “the Council did not approve and was not asked to approve these tours.”

The deputy commander of the Jerusalem District police, Brig. Gen. Amir Arzani, gave the heritage ministry permission to hold the tours. “There is no reason not to hold guided tours on Temple Mount, in compliance with the regulations and visitor times there and in coordination with the David subdistrict,” wrote Arzani to the ministry’s director-general, Itay Granek.

The decision to hold these tours, reported on Monday by public broadcaster Kan, is not new. It was made last December, when a committee charged with assessing bids for ministry jobs determined that tours funded by the ministry in Jerusalem’s Old City would include guided tours on Temple Mount.

According to sources, the allocation for these tours is based on a government decision from May 2023, intended to bolster tourism in the Old City with an overall two-million-shekel budget. For now, it’s not known what part of this funding will be allocated to the tours.

The East Jerusalem Development company, the government and municipality’s executive arm in tourism and culture initiatives in East Jerusalem, is expected to manage these tours.

The heritage ministry says that “following the government’s decision, the ministry intends to hold guided tours on Temple Mount, allowing tens of thousands of Jews and hundreds of thousands of tourists who come there every year to hear about the mount’s Jewish heritage in an accurate historical version.”

The ministry added that “running these guided tours will be authorized and carried out after receiving all the relevant permits, following the holding of a lawful bidding process, in coordination with the National Security Council and the police.”

On Monday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir claimed that there was now a new policy regarding Temple Mount, according to which there were no restrictions on Jews praying in the compound.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office clarified in response that there was no change in the status quo on Temple Mount.

However, this month, Ben-Gvir and Negev and Galilee Development Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf (also of Otzma Yehudit) visited the Temple Mount compound on Tisha B’av, with hundreds of Jewish visitors praying there at the time, in contravention of the status quo. Police forces were present but refrained from enforcing the prohibition on prayers.

Last month, Ben-Gvir declared at a Knesset conference devoted to the return of Jews to Temple Mount that he was the political echelon, and that this echelon was permitting Jewish prayers on Temple Mount. Then too, Netanyahu responded, saying that the status quo had not changed and would not change in the future.

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