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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Jordan condemns Ben Gvir’s visit to Temple Mount
2025-05-27
[IsraelTimes] Jordan condemns a visit by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to the Temple Mount.

“The practices of this extremist minister and his continued incursions into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque… do not negate the fact that East Jerusalem is an occupied city over which Israel has no sovereignty,” says a statement from the foreign ministry of Jordan.

The Temple Mount is the holiest place in Judaism, where two biblical Temples once stood, and Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest shrine in Islam, making the site a central flashpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel captured the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s Old City from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. However, it allowed the Jordanian Waqf to continue to maintain religious authority atop the mount. Under their 1994 peace treaty, Israel recognized Amman’s “special role… in Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem.”

Ben Gvir says Jewish prayer, including full prostration, permitted at flashpoint Temple Mount

[IsraelTimes] National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declares that Jewish prayer, including full prostration, is allowed on the Temple Mount as he pays a Jerusalem Day visit to the contested holy site.

Flanked by Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf and MK Yitzhak Kroizer, both members of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party, Ben Gvir says that “many Jews are flooding the Temple Mount.”

“Today, thank God, it is possible to pray on the Temple Mount, to bow down on the Temple Mount – we thank God for that,” the far-right minister declares — adding that he and his colleagues had come to “pray for the safety of the hostages” and “for victory in the war.”

A photo apparently shows Kroizer prostrated on the Mount alongside other Jews as a police officers look on.

Meanwhile, MK Zvi Sukkot, of the far-right Religious Zionism party, was filmed walking across the holy site with an Israeli flag, repeatedly declaring “the Temple Mount is in our hands.”

Ben Gvir has long rebuffed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated insistence that the decades-old status quo, which bans Jewish prayer on the site, remains in force.

The Prime Minister’s Office says it is looking into the matter.

Ben Gvir says he also prayed for the success of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious pick to head the Shin Bet security agency, Maj. Gen. David Zini.

“And I pray for the success of the new head of the Shin Bet: that he will pursue our enemies, that he will mow down our enemies, as he has done throughout his years – to be professional, and to distinguish between an enemy and a friend: those who love are embraced, and enemies are mowed down,” he says.

Ben Gvir last visited the Temple Mount in early April, eliciting criticism from the coalition’s ultra-Orthodox members as Haredim believe it is forbidden to tread in the holy site due to its sanctity.

Jews are not officially allowed to pray at the Temple Mount, but the Israel Police, which comes under the purview of Ben Gvir’s ministry, has increasingly tolerated limited prayer there.

Ben Gvir has said repeatedly that his policy is to allow Jewish prayer there, drawing rebukes from US and international officials, as well as warnings from the security establishment that conflict over the site poses a risk to national security.
Posted by:trailing wife

#3  Rid of Hashemites (imported by Perfidious Albion after WWI - to establish Arab-Palestinian state). Expel all Arabs from Judea & Samaria to the new Palestinian state.
Posted by: Grom the Affective   2025-05-27 01:41  

#2  That’s quite an opinion, Grom — explain, please?
Posted by: trailing wife   2025-05-27 01:34  

#1  One of Israel's biggest mistakes (IMO) - not helping "Palestinians" to get rid of Hashemites in 1970.
Posted by: Grom the Affective   2025-05-27 01:33  

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