Al-Aqsa won’t become a synagogue. There are real reasons to fight the occupation
Israeli police in Jerusalem’s Old City after Palestinians had shot fireworks at them, March 2022
Nir Hasson writes in Haaretz on 21April 2022:
I’ve been writing about events in Jerusalem for 14 years now. Most of my time is spent on the way the Israeli occupation treats Palestinian residents of the city.
Israel denies them basic democratic rights, demolishes their homes and restricts their movement. The police treat all Palestinians as an enemy, and other agencies discriminate against them in every field – health, education, transportation, infrastructure. So I can say that the occupation in Jerusalem is bad enough and there’s no need to make up lies about it.
Contrary to what is being said on Palestinian social media, in the mainstream Arab media and by preachers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Israeli government has no secret plans to push Muslims off the Temple Mount and turn it into a site of Jewish worship. The security cabinet hasn’t decided to divide the Al-Aqsa compound and prayer times on the Mount between Jews and Muslims, as it did at the Ibrahimi Mosque (the Tomb of the Patriarchs) in Hebron.
The government hasn’t ordered the police’s special forces to draw up an operation to oust Muslims from the Mount, nor has it ordered settlers to sacrifice goats at Al-Aqsa on Passover.
It’s true that Israeli society has changed regarding the Mount. Until 20 years ago, very few Jews had any interest in the site or wanted to visit it for religious reasons.
This change stems from theological and political processes very deep beneath the surface of Israel’s religious community. These processes began in the 1980s and strengthened following the Oslo Accords in the ‘90s and the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. As a result, pressure grew on the government and the police to change the status quo on the Mount to permit Jewish worship there.
Temple Mount activists have scored two significant successes. First, the number of Jews visiting Al-Aqsa has increased. Last year, 33,523 Jews visited the Mount (many of them visited a number of times). This is a large number compared with 20 years ago, but it’s minuscule compared with the number of Jews visiting the Western Wall or the number of Muslims praying at Al-Aqsa. Both of those figures are in the millions.
The activists’ second success is that in recent years they have gotten the police to ignore Jews who pray silently on the eastern part of the Mount.
Still, it’s important to remember that the Palestinians have also racked up several successes at Al-Aqsa. Thanks to the Palestinians’ struggle, the restrictions on young men entering the Mount that were in force in 2014 and 2015 were canceled. In 2017, the police removed the metal detectors they had placed at the Mount after a terror attack killed two police officers at the entrance to the site.
Today, even the police are more careful about using guns on the Mount (that’s the reason they’re often using batons). They allow West Bank Palestinians to come pray at the site, strive to prevent disruptions of Muslim prayer services and close the Mount to Jews during the last 10 days of Ramadan.
I’m not making light of the threat to the status quo on Al-Aqsa, I’m just pointing out that the people who want to offer sacrifices or build a synagogue there belong to small, radical groups that are unpopular with most Israelis. Most of Israel’s religious parties oppose visiting the Mount for reasons based on Jewish religious law, and even in the religious Zionist community, opinions are split on this issue.
All Israeli governments, even the most extreme, have understood that Israel’s freedom of action at Al-Aqsa is very limited – partly due to fears of violence in Jerusalem and elsewhere, but also due to international pressure. At least at Al-Aqsa, Israel isn’t as powerful as the Palestinians think and the Palestinians aren’t as weak.
So it’s important that the Palestinians not be tempted to believe all the rumors that derive from fake news online and ignorance of Israeli politics and religion.
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