Simmering tensions over ancient Jerusalem site nearing a boil

JERUSALEM — Glimmering over Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex’s ancient golden dome exudes a serenity that stands in stark contrast to an earthly tug-of-war over who should worship at the holy site.

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A flashpoint for violence in recent decades, a once-fringe movement that is seeking to end the compound’s Islamic governance, allow non-Muslims to pray there and even one day build a new Jewish temple on the site is gaining traction within the Israeli government and also among some American evangelical Christians.

The Temple Mount movement — a loose coalition of Israeli religious and nationalist organizations — harbors a potentially explosive mix of prophecy and politics that aims to upend some 1,300 years of Muslim control over the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest one for Jews.

“Muslims are allowed to sing, unfortunately tourists are not yet allowed to sing,” U.S.-born rabbi Yehudah Glick and one of the movement’s leaders, told NBC News as he led a tour of some 20 people around the compound last month. “One of our major battles is to change that situation and to be allowed to sing and pray on the mountain.”

Throughout the tour, Glick quoted from holy texts including the Bible’s Book of Zechariah, which prophesies God’s return to Jerusalem. He also asked his party to envision the first and second Jewish temples that once stood here, as described in ancient Hebrew texts.

Among those in his group were evangelical Christians, some of whom are drawn by the belief that God promised the land of Israel to the Jews, who would rule it until the return of Jesus to Jerusalem for the rapture and to lead their ascent to Heaven.

Cydney Galbraith, a designer from Canada who was on Glick’s tour, said she believed divine intervention would force Muslims out of the complex.

“I think the Lord is going to do something so unusual that our minds can’t conceive,” said Galbraith, who describes herself as a Christian Zionist. “And we’re going to watch him push them out. He’s going to totally drive them out.”

For his part, Glick advocates for a future temple that is a “house of prayer for all nations” and not exclusively Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

‘Very naive’

Even the idea that the compound could become a shared space belies the political reality of modern Israel, according to Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher with the Israeli rights group Ir Amim, which documents conflict in Jerusalem and advocates for all of the city’s residents.

Pointing to the fact that most Palestinians live under occupation and the people of east Jerusalem are effectively denied political representation, he said the idea of sharing the compound “is very twisted.”

“Any place that Jewish settlers, Israeli settlers, and the Israeli government put their eyes on, the thing is to expel Palestinians from it,” he said, referring to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and evictions of Palestinian families in east Jerusalem . “To think that in the most holiest place, most contested place, things will be different is very naive.”

Such a move would likely spark widespread outrage among Palestinians, whose majority Muslim community has been worshipping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque since it was built in the 8th century. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven from the Dome of the Rock.

A stark example of just how explosive the issue can be came in 2000, after the then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon entered the compound surrounded by police and soldiers. The move was widely seen as deliberately provocative and triggered rioting across Jerusalem’s Old City.

The five-year period of violence that followed in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, known as the Second, or the Al-Aqsa, Intifada, featured frequent suicide bombings and intense military operations.

Any attempt to change the religious status quo of the site could be dangerous, according to Mazen Jabari, a Palestinian political consultant and researcher who traces his family’s history in Jerusalem’s Old City back 600 years and lives within view of Al Aqsa.

“You are playing with fire when you want to change the situation inside,” he said. “In Rome, if you go to the Vatican, you buy a ticket and you go inside. But I cannot pray inside this place.”

Israel controls security and access to the compound where Muslims have exclusive prayer rights and religious matters. The site is administered by a Jordan-based religious authority known as the Jerusalem Islamic Waq.

According to the Waqf and Glick, more than 70,000 Jewish activists entered the mosque compound last year. In 2021, 33,000 visited, the Waqf said.

The growing “incursions” are accompanied by growing Israeli involvement in the management of services and facilities inside the mosque, the Waqf said in a statement to NBC News.

“The goal is to transfer the center of administrative decision-making related to the management of Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Jordanian Waqf to the Israeli agenda,” the Waqf statement added.

The office of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there is no change in policy regarding the status quo of the compound. Members of his government -- including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir -- openly defy the policy, frequently visiting Al-Aqsa and bringing Jewish settlers to pray.

During Glick’s tour, NBC News witnessed a Jewish group openly defying the rules by praying and prostrating on the edge of the compound under the protection of police. Later, they unfurled Israeli flags and sang the national anthem on the steps leading to the Dome of the Rock.

‘Eternal gathering place’

Jerry Bowers, who was also part of Glick’s tour group , said he would like to see increased access to Al-Aqsa to non-Muslims.

“We believe as Christians that this is going to be the eternal gathering place for all Christians at the end of time, and so it’s important to pray for peace, peace for Jerusalem,” said Bowers, a pastor from Brownwood, Texas.

He added that instead of the Jerusalem Waqf, Israel should administer the site “because there’s going to be more freedom” than “what it has been.”

Other groups of tourists wandered the grounds, snapping selfies. Only a handful of Muslim worshippers could be seen . Israeli authorities regularly limit Palestinians’ access to the site.

Built on the site of the rock where many Jews, Christians and Muslims believe God spared Abraham’s son Isaac from his father’s knife, the Temple Mount is also the site of two earlier Jewish temples. The first one, built in the time of King Solomon around 3,000 years ago, was destroyed in 387 B.C. by the Babylonians.

The Second Temple was built after a period of Jewish exile, only for it to be destroyed in A.D. 70 by the Romans, just a few decades after Jesus was crucified outside the city walls.

According to Tatarsky, the researcher with the Ir Amim rights group, the idea of a third temple that once was considered “lunatic” is becoming more mainstream.

But religious convictions and harsh political reality are again coming to a boil in this ancient spot. On this year’s Jerusalem Day — a May 14 holiday that commemorates the capture of east Jerusalem by Israeli forces in 1967 — Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister, waved an Israeli flag in front of the Dome of the Rock, as seen in a video released by his office.

Ben-Gvir, who frequently marches into the compound to pray with his supporters, then quoted a paratrooper who was among the Israeli forces that seized Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967: “The Temple Mount is in our hands.”