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When Israel appointed a new Jerusalem district police commander earlier this week, Haaretz warned that the decision could have immediate and dangerous consequences for the Temple Mount. In a lengthy analysis, the paper described the site as a powder keg, arguing that any further erosion of the long-standing status quo — particularly regarding Jewish prayer — risked igniting widespread violence. The article portrayed recent developments on the Mount as the product of political pressure from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and framed even symbolic Jewish religious expression there as a provocation that could serve as a catalyst for future attacks.
That grim assessment, which reflects a view common in parts of Israel’s security and media establishment, stands in sharp contrast to both Israel’s official statements and the lived reality unfolding on the Mount itself. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to insist publicly that Israel has not altered the status quo at Judaism’s holiest site. Yet, Israeli police enforcement patterns, political rhetoric, and the experiences of those who ascend the Mount increasingly tell a more complicated story — one in which the status quo exists more as a slogan than as a coherent or consistently applied policy.
The so-called status quo dates to June 1967, when Israel captured East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. Seeking to prevent immediate religious conflict, then–Defense Minister Moshe Dayan left day-to-day control of the Temple Mount in the hands of the Islamic Waqf, a Jordanian-backed religious authority, while Israel retained responsibility for security. Muslims would continue to pray freely at Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Jews and other non-Muslims would be allowed to visit, but not to pray. This arrangement was never enshrined in law, but over time it hardened into doctrine, enforced by Israeli police and upheld by courts on public-order grounds.
Under this framework, Jewish prayer on the Mount came to be treated not as a religious act but as a security threat. Jews were stopped for moving their lips, bowing their heads, or carrying prayer items. Even silent prayer could result in removal or arrest. The assumption underlying the policy was that Jewish worship itself would provoke violence, and therefore Jewish rights had to be curtailed to maintain calm.
What this approach obscured was history. The Temple Mount is not merely a disputed piece of real estate or a diplomatic flashpoint. It is the central site of Jewish religious civilization. It was the location of the First and Second Temples, the focal point of Jewish pilgrimage, sacrifice, and prayer for centuries. Even after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, Jews continued to visit the Mount when permitted and to yearn for it when barred. Medieval sources document Jewish prayer there under early Muslim rule, including a visit by Maimonides in the 12th century. When Jews were later excluded, they developed liturgies, pilgrimages, and artistic traditions oriented toward the Mount — praying at its gates, gazing at it from the Mount of Olives, and embedding it at the heart of Jewish consciousness.
That continuity is often erased in contemporary discussions, replaced by claims that Jewish presence on the Mount is inherently extremist or novel.
I was reminded of this erasure in December, when I visited the Temple Mount with my family, including my six children, escorted by Professor Jeffrey R. Woolf of Bar-Ilan University’s Talmud Department. Woolf, a leading scholar of Jewish law and history, has spent years studying Jewish access to the Mount across centuries of foreign rule. In messages he shared with me after our visit, he emphasized that Jewish presence there is neither new nor inherently provocative. What is new, he explained, is the scale and diversity of Jews choosing to ascend — secular Israelis, traditional families such as ours, modern Orthodox students, and even some Haredim — reflecting a renewed awareness of the Mount’s centrality to Jewish identity.
Our visit itself captured the contradictions of the present moment. We were brought up in groups of roughly 30, rushed along a tightly controlled route, and tensely surrounded by Israeli police. The officers were there to protect us, but also to regulate and restrain us. The police presence was constant and heavy, a reminder that this was not a normal religious visit but a carefully managed exercise in risk mitigation.
At one point, we watched as a man was arrested by Israeli police for lighting a small Hanukkah menorah. The act was quiet and brief, yet it crossed an invisible line. Jewish prayer, it became clear, was neither fully permitted nor categorically forbidden. It existed in a gray zone, subject to discretionary enforcement and shifting political winds.
Elsewhere on the Mount, we saw ancient wooden pillars that had been removed during renovations beneath the mosque complex. According to those who examined them, the stones were carbon-dated to the First Temple period. Rather than being studied openly or shared with the broader public, they now sit covered under tarps, inaccessible to the Jewish community. The image was hard to ignore: physical remnants of Jewish history lying exposed yet concealed, acknowledged yet withheld.
Professor Woolf later reflected that the current moment represents a turning point. After 1967, Israel’s newly established chief rabbinate discouraged Jews from ascending the Mount out of concern for ritual impurity, since the precise location of the Holy of Holies is unknown. That prohibition, he noted, was based in Jewish law, rather than political. Over time, scholars identified areas where entry was permitted following immersion in a mikveh, a Jewish ritual bath, and Jews began returning in small numbers.
In the past decade, that trickle has become a surge, driven not by a desire to displace Muslims but by a growing sense that the Mount cannot be permanently outsourced from Jewish religious life.
The day after our visit, Hamas offered its own account of events. In statements and social media posts, the terrorist group claimed that hundreds of Israeli “settlers” had “stormed” Al-Aqsa Mosque, carrying out provocative rituals aimed at “Judaizing” the site. Video clips circulated with ominous captions. The claims bore little resemblance to reality. What I witnessed was singing, prayer, and close police supervision — including arrests carried out by Israeli authorities themselves. Yet, the narrative spread rapidly, untethered from facts.
This pattern is familiar. For years, accusations that “Al-Aqsa is in danger” have been used to incite violence, from lone-wolf attacks to large-scale riots and rocket fire. The status quo has often functioned less as a peace agreement than as a veto, granting extremists effective control over which Jewish rights may be exercised and which must be suppressed. Even as Jewish prayer has been restricted in the name of calm, incitement has continued unabated.
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Israel now finds itself caught between competing imperatives. It seeks to preserve security and avoid international condemnation. It also claims to be a democracy committed to freedom of worship. Maintaining both positions indefinitely may no longer be possible. The gradual changes on the Mount — uneven enforcement, increased Jewish presence, and open political advocacy for expanded rights — suggest that the old framework is fraying.
Whether this moment leads to a clearer, more principled policy or to deeper instability remains uncertain. What is clear is that the Temple Mount cannot remain frozen in a fiction where Jewish prayer is treated as inherently illegitimate at Judaism’s holiest site. History, demography, and reality itself are pressing against the boundaries of the so-called status quo. Jerusalem has always been a city where faith and politics collide. On the Temple Mount, that collision is not theoretical; it is happening now, in full view, stone by ancient stone.