MKs Mount up
Lawmakers take advantage of pilot after two-year ban
For the first time in almost two years, Knesset members were allowed to enter the Temple Mount on Tuesday. MKs Yehudah Glick (Likud) and Shuli Moalem-Refaeli (Bayit Yehudi) were the only MKs who took advantage of the one-day police pilot.
Since 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prevented MKs from entering the compound, although some Arab MKs have successfully violated the order, apparently unrecognized by police.
Accompanied by security personnel, Glick and Moalem-Refaeli ascended the Mugrabi Gate bridge – the only entrance for non-Muslims to the Temple Mount – and toured the compound on Tuesday morning.
After leaving the site, Glick, who was a prominent Temple Mount activist before becoming a lawmaker, said that his previous visit was on the day he became a lawmaker last year.
“I hope that this place will fulfill its destiny to be a house for worldwide peace,” he said.
“When I was up there I was thinking about Israeli society; I wish that we could close the gaps [between societal groups] and be less polarized. I was praying for my wife and children and for world peace,” he said.
Moalem-Refaeli said that she was saddened from the tight supervision of the Wakf Islamic trust forces who followed her during the visit.
“I can’t understand why... This is the holiest place for the Jewish people, and I couldn’t pray there. The only prayer I had to God was in my heart,” she said.
However, Moalem-Refaeli thanked the Israel Police, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked for dealing with the phenomenon of the Murabitat and Murabitun Islamic groups of women and men, respectively, which have been paid to harass Jewish visitors on Mount in the past.
“After two years in which I wasn’t on Temple Mount – there’s no yelling [at our groups],” she said. “It is very noticeable. You can walk around quietly, listen to your surroundings. It really allows you to feel that you are in the holy site.”
At the entrance to the Mugrabi Gate bridge a small group of left-wing activists gathered to protest against the MKs entering the compound.
They held signs reading, “Lunatics, get off the Mount,” suggesting that Jewish presence on Temple Mount could spark violence.
Nabil Abu Rudaineh, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, told Palestinian media the Israeli visits to the holy site “will lead to disastrous consequences, and the Israeli government bears full responsibility for them.”
Laura Wharton (Meretz-Labor), opposition leader in the Jerusalem City Council, told The Jerusalem Post that Jewish MKs entering the Temple Mount is a selfish and irresponsible act.
“Even if he [Glick] is saying that he wants to go up [to the site] and pray for his own personal reasons, as a public figure, he has the responsibility for the repercussion of what he does.
“He is endangering the general public with what he’s doing,” Wharton said.
Glick refused to argue with the activists and wished them a happy new year.
Some lawmakers, who would be interested in visiting the Mount under other circumstances, boycotted the one-day pilot.
MK Ahmad Tibi, head of the Joint List’s Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Committee, said the faction would not go to the Aksa Mosque “in the framework of a provocation and under the conditions set by Netanyahu and the police.
“Arab MKs will enter whenever they want and not when Netanyahu wants. That is how it was in the past, and how it will be in the future,” Tibi said. “Arab MKs enter their mosque, but the right-wing extremist MKs break into the mosque under the sponsorship of the Israeli government and police, and they are the ones who are seeking to change the status quo and be allowed to pray in the area of the mosque. The world sees who is inciting.”
Bayit Yehudi MK Bezalel Smotrich said he is not willing to ascend the Mount “like a thief in the night.
“The Temple Mount is the holiest place for the Jewish people and the State of Israel must exercise its sovereignty there,” he said.
The conditions set for MKs to be allowed on the Temple Mount were contained in a “humiliating” letter written by the Knesset Guard, Smotrich said. They are “illegal, undemocratic and unacceptable.”
“This bizarre pilot... which is practically begging [Muslim] rioters to riot, is an unacceptable new low,” Smotrich said.
The Knesset Guard instructed Muslim and non-Muslim MKs to ascend the Mount at separate times, and forbade them from giving speeches or media interviews while there.
Adam Rasgon contributed to this report.