https://arab.news/bnrrr
Loud alarm bells are sounding in the royal court and waqf offices in Amman and Jerusalem as to the plans of radical Israeli groups, with staunch support from the Benjamin Netanyahu government, regarding Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The attempts of Israelis to take over part or all of the 144-dunum, UNESCO-protected world heritage site are not new. A look at the behavior of the Israeli groups that daily infiltrate the mosque with heavy security protection and the latest action of praying on the Al-Aqsa esplanade by Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reflect this concern.
Ironically, despite the eroding status quo regarding the administration of the mosque, the Israeli government keeps falsely claiming that its commitment to the status quo agreement has not changed. The status quo is a set of 18th and 19th-century Ottoman firmans (edicts) regarding the administration of holy sites in Jerusalem. The most important of these decrees was an 1852 firman by the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I, which preserved the possession and division of Islamic and Christian holy sites and set out in detail all matters regarding ownership and management issues.
In 2014 — following Israeli restrictions on entry to the mosque and repressive measures against Palestinians on the holy site — the US government, Israel and Jordan agreed on an important explanation. The understanding announced in Jordan by King Abdullah, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated clearly and publicly that “Al-Aqsa Mosque is for Muslims to pray and for all others to visit.”
For years, Muslim worshippers have been concerned that Israel is trying to divide this holy site, by space and by time, between Jews and Muslims, as it has done at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque. Muslims see the constant erosion of the status quo as a gradual move in that direction.
A right-wing Israeli site, Makor Rishon, published on Monday a chart claiming a 14 percent increase in Jewish “visitors” to the mosque area, which is called the Temple Mount by Jews. The chart states that a record 58,149 Jews entered Al-Haram Al-Sharif in 2024, up from 50,098 the previous year. During the same period, the number of non-Jewish tourists visiting Al-Aqsa went down from 363,020 to a mere 32,031.
Officials say that the Israelis are trying to isolate the eastern side of Al-Aqsa as if it were a synagogue.
Daoud Kuttab
Nowhere is this concern more acutely felt than in the clear lust by extremist Israeli groups to take over the eastern part of the compound, especially the two buildings that make up the prayer halls of Bab Al-Rahmeh. Radical Israeli groups visiting the mosque area are often taken to this section, where they are spending unusually extended periods of time. The Islamic waqf guards and even general Muslim worshippers are forcefully kept away by the Israeli soldiers guarding these groups.
While the Jordanian-run waqf department that manages the holy site has shown flexibility regarding the visits during non-Muslim prayer hours, it now feels that Al-Aqsa is being completely violated by the Israeli authorities. Officials say this has not happened since the occupation of the city in 1967.
Islamic officials in Jerusalem are saying that the Israelis are trying to isolate the eastern side of Al-Aqsa as if it were a synagogue. Muslim worshippers and even the staff of the waqf are forbidden to approach. One official said: “This is a clear interference in our work managing this holy site and this is also a violation of the agreements, especially the Wadi Araba agreement signed between Israel and Jordan, which states clearly that Jordan is the custodian of the Christian and Islamic holy places in Jerusalem.”
The war on Gaza and the fear that the current settler-run Netanyahu government might not be around for a long time has given radical Israeli groups an incentive to try and create irreversible facts on the ground in Al-Aqsa, and it appears that taking over Bab Al-Rahmeh is their top priority. An Israeli peace activist told this writer that he has seen blueprints at a West Jerusalem engineering office that include the conversion of the Islamic Bab Al-Rahmeh prayer halls into a two-story synagogue that will be easily approachable using the closed gates that are on the eastern side of the mosque. While such ideas might have seemed absurd years ago, the gradual erosion of previously accepted arrangements appears to be coming true.
Public statements and warnings by the Jerusalem waqf council and the Jordanian Ministry of Islamic Waqf, as well as numerous resolutions by UNESCO, have had negligible effect on the plans of radical Israelis to redraw the borders of Islam’s third-holiest mosque and make parts of it a Jewish synagogue.
- Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He is the author of “State of Palestine NOW: Practical and logical arguments for the best way to bring peace to the Middle East.” X: @daoudkuttab