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Jerusalem's Forever Crisis

(Foreign Policy) Yardena Schwartz - Today, Palestinians and much of the Muslim world deny any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, rejecting the notion that a Jewish temple once stood there. Yet, as Ofer Zalzberg, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, noted, in 1925, the official Waqf booklet given to tourists visiting the Temple Mount clearly stated that it was once the site of the Temple of Solomon. "This was less than a century ago, and this has changed. Today, the vast majority of Palestinians would vehemently reject it...though it's an established archeological fact." The change occurred, Zalzberg said, because until the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish history of the Temple Mount was not perceived as a threat to Muslim preeminence there. Today, however, the presence of Jews is characterized as a "storming" of the compound. Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, says, "To allow Israelis to believe that al-Aqsa Mosque was built on the ruins of the Temple Mount, it's a dangerous thing to even accept, because that means that one day the Jews will basically destroy al-Aqsa to rebuild the temple on the ruins of al-Aqsa Mosque. That's what's scary to Muslims and Palestinians." To be sure, there are elements within Israeli society that would like to see a third temple built on the Temple Mount. But their goal is widely perceived as a fantasy: Netanyahu, along with Israel's security establishment, has consistently rejected any calls to change the status quo.
2017-08-04 00:00:00
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