For the Palestinians, It’s Worry All The Time

The Palestinians like to whip themselves into frenzies about diabolical Israeli plans to seize more sacred spaces and places for themselves and their settler-colonial apartheid genocidal state. Their anguish is expressed in such phrases as “Al-Aqsa Is In Danger,” with its implied corollary that it is up to the Arabs and Muslims to rescue the Mosque from whatever horror the Jewish state has fiendishly planned. Of course, in reality, the only thing endangering Al-Aqsa are the weapons – rocks, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, and more – that the Palestinians have stored inside the Mosque, and that they hurl at Jews as the spirit moves them. Sometimes they hurl rocks and fireworks from inside the Mosque at Jewish visitors, and Israeli police, on the Temple Mount. Sometimes they even carry those rocks to the edge of the Mount and hurl them down upon Jewish worshippers praying at the Western Wall far below. It is these Palestinians – not the Israelis — who, in using the Mosque both as a weapons storehouse and as a fort, have managed to desecrate Al-Aqsa. “Israeli MK proposes dividing Temple Mount between Jews and Muslims,” JNS, June 8, 2023:

A Likud lawmaker is proposing a plan to divide Jerusalem’s Temple Mount between Muslims and Jews and to remove Jordan’s custodial status over the holy site.

Speaking to the Zman Yisrael Hebrew news site, Knesset member Amit Halevi outlined a plan whereby Muslims would control the southern end of the 37-acre complex which contains the Al-Aqsa mosque, while Jews would receive the central and northern area, where the Dome of the Rock sits.

According to Halevi, the reorganization makes sense from a religious point of view because that part of the Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, where it is believed the First and Second Temples stood. The Foundation Stone at the center of the Dome of the Rock is where Jewish sources place the Holy of Holies.

Elder of Ziyon comments:

Palestinian sites are reporting this as a “draft law” (it isn’t) and they are certain that the current Israeli government is planning to do this.

There is no such draft law. There is so far only a tentative proposal, made orally, by an obscure Likud backbencher whose suggestion has been met in Israel with a telling silence. But to listen to the Palestinians, it’s as if Netanyahu himself had demanded that the Temple Mount be divided “temporally and spatially” and the entire Knesset had broken out in applause.

Lots of the Palestinian leaders – though so far not Mahmoud Abbas himself – have been taking Amit Halevi’s proposal much too seriously. Perhaps they haven’t noticed, but not even Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have seconded the proposal, which would be impossible to achieve, and very dangerous for Israel to even try. It’s not only the Arabs and Muslims who would be enraged. Think of how the UN, of how the British, French, and Americans, would react to such an attempt. All hell would break loose, and Israel would in this matter not have a single ally it could count on. Elder of Ziyon continues:

In his weekly cabinet meeting, Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said “taking this step would cause overwhelming anger whose results cannot be controlled, because of the sanctity and religious value that Al-Aqsa Mosque constitutes for the Palestinian people and for Arabs and Muslims.” 

Of course, Shtayyeh’s remark is slightly off, because Amit Halevi is proposing to give the Palestinians complete control of Al-Aqsa Mosque. What he should have said is that “the proposal would give the Jews control of the Dome of the Rock. The Dome of the Rock, I must remind you, is of great religious value to all Muslims and we cannot, of course, allow it to fall into Jewish hands.”

President of the Palestinian National Council, Ruhi Fattouh, called it “a fascist step by the racist settlement government to impose its control over the city of Jerusalem and its religious and historical places, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.” He also called this a prelude to a religious war that will  ignite the region….

Well, Israel has already “imposed its control over the city of Jerusalem” by annexing it more than forty years ago, in 1980. Perhaps Ruhi Fatouh failed to notice. But when it comes to the Temple Mount, the Jews have bent over backwards not to offend Muslims. In 1967, Israel’s Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, made the fatal decision to forbid Jewish visitors from saying prayers, either openly or silently, while on the Mount. Nor would they be allowed to bring with them prayerbooks, prayer shawls, or tefillin. And Jews since then have scrupulously abided by those prohibitions. Furthermore, Jews are allowed to visit the Mount on only five days of the week, and on those days, only for three hours in the morning, and one hour in the afternoon, while Muslims can visit what they call the Haram al-Sharif at any time of day, seven days a week. There has been no attempt by Israel to “impose its control over the…religious and historical sites,” save for trying to protect Jews when Arab rioters attack them on the Temple Mount, or shoot at Jewish pilgrims when they visit the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, or when Palestinians firebomb Joseph’s Tomb and Rachel’s Tomb. Yes, in order to save the lives of Jews visiting religious sites, and to protect the sites themselves from being destroyed, the IDF will act to protect both. Israel leaves the management of the Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf.

When Ruhi Fattouh threatens a “religious war,” he should know that the Israelis had a religious war — a jihad — thrust upon them the day after their country declared its independence, and they have been fighting that jihad, launched against them by Muslims on May 15, 1948, ever since. There have been big wars of survival, in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and smaller ones, meaning the dozen campaigns Israel has been forced to fight against the terror groups Hamas and PIJ in Gaza, and the terrorist Hezbollah in Lebanon. Elder of Ziyon concludes:

It is to Palestinians what the “Palestine is Jordan” plan is to Jordan – something they are intensely worried about but for which there is no realistic path. But it gives them endless nourishment for outlandish conspiracy theories.

It’s all nonsense, of course, this Palestinian charge of a “plan by the Israelis” to divide the Temple Mount into a Jewish and a Muslim area. Amit Halevi’s proposal will go nowhere. On this he’s a party of one. The Israelis know any such attempt to divide the Temple Mount would indeed lead to a conflagration involving not just the Palestinians, but dozens of Arab and Muslim states. It’s a no-brainer, a non-starter, a Very Bad Idea.