He was called "bulldozer" because of his reckless politics.
Ariel Sharon knew exactly what he was doing on September 28, 2000: polarize, provoke, spark.
And he knew he had to state the opposite publicly: "I have come with a message of peace."
Sharon, then an Israeli opposition leader, had already marched on the Temple Mount with almost 1,000 soldiers and police officers.
Like no other place in the already contested Jerusalem, this place is overloaded with religious and political symbolism.
There are important Islamic sites with the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque - near the Western Wall, the highest Jewish sanctuary.
Al-Haram al-Sharif, the "Noble Sanctuary", is what Muslims call the Temple Mount;
the al-Aqsa mosque is its third most important pilgrimage site.
Small things are enough here to stir up hatred and permanently disrupt the fragile coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis.
And what Sharon did was no trivial matter: A politician marched on the Temple Mount who many Palestinians believed was a war criminal because of his leading role in the 1982 Lebanon war with the massacres of Sabra and Shatila.
This controversial place is also administered by an Arab authority, the Waqf.
A Jewish temple once stood here, possibly on the site of the Dome of the Rock, which religious zealots want to rebuild right there.
The hour of the hardliners
So Sharon's action was a symbolic show of power.
It should show who exercised the unquestionable supremacy in Jerusalem, a city of three world religions and two peoples, but which Israel has declared by law to be eternally indivisible.
Sharon fueled fears among Muslims of losing access and control over their sanctuaries.
At the same time he asserted: "I think we can live with the Palestinians. I came here to the holiest place for the Jewish people to see what is going on here and what is going on - but not as a provocation."
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Sharon's hypocritical Temple Mount visit: "I did not come to the provocation"
Photo:
Awad Awad / AFP
Hardly any observer believed that.
The EU also recognized a "provocation", fatally at a time of political stalemate: only months earlier, the well advanced peace negotiations at Camp David between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority had failed.
Reciprocal accusations followed.
Sharon's visit turned the frustration into violence.
His visit to the Temple Mount was not the cause, but the trigger for the second Intifada with thousands of deaths in the following five years.
The first Intifada in 1987 was a spontaneous uprising by angry, stone-throwing youth.
Thirteen years later, the conflict with suicide attacks and rocket attacks sometimes took on war-like features.
And so Sharon also gave Palestinian hardliners the opportunity to strike - including a catchy attribution: Soon there was talk of the "al-Aqsa intifada", as if the mosque itself was in danger.
Arafat, politically weakened, did nothing to contain the violence.
The day after the Temple Mount visit, the first deaths and hundreds were injured.
Sharon's calculation in the middle of the Israeli election campaign paid off: he won the support of the far right;
the left and the peace movement were long too weak.
Four months later, the Likud politician became the new prime minister.
Once more the world looked at Israel and wondered why the conflict in such a small country could intensify on a mountain plateau measuring just 300 by 500 meters.
This only becomes clearer through a journey deep into the biblical past.
Access for the high priest only
Around the time of King David, who, according to biblical tradition, occupied the once sleepy nest of Jerusalem around 1000 BC.
For strategic reasons made the capital;
so he could better connect his domains in the north and south.
Jerusalem only became a holy city under David's son Solomon: the presumed builder of the first Jewish temple chose an elevation for it that was soon also called Zion mount;
Much later, Zion became synonymous with Jerusalem - and with the longing for a Jewish state.
The question of where exactly on the mountain the first (and later the second) temple was located is unresolved and yet has consequences: Was it on the sacred rock Moriah?
According to the old Jewish understanding, this rock like a bolt prevented the outbreak of hell.
It was considered the place of divine presence, the navel of the world and the "stone of creation".
Here Abraham is said to have offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God.
SPIEGEL TV report: The Tempelberg powder keg
Many experts therefore suspect that the rock must have been built over by the Holy of Holies, the most sacred room in the temple.
The ark with the Ten Commandments is said to have been there.
Only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies once a year, on the highest holiday, Yom Kippur.
All of this has had an impact to this day because Muslims conquered Jerusalem in AD 637.
The first and second Jewish temples had long since been destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans.
The last destruction in 70 AD in particular was a trauma for the Jewish people, who were expelled shortly afterwards and lived in the diaspora for centuries.
Only the western enclosure of the temple complex remained - the Western Wall.
Wailing Wall or Burak Wall?
But the longing for Jerusalem lived on.
"If I ever forget you, Jerusalem, let my right hand wither", says Psalm 137 of the Bible.
"I want my tongue to stick to the roof of my mouth when I don't think about you anymore."
The new rulers, meanwhile, erected the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the rubble of the Temple Mount, with its golden dome today the symbol of Jerusalem.
It is not a mosque, but a shrine to honor that rock that is also sacred to the Jews.
According to Islamic belief, the rock is said to close off the world from a cave in which the souls of the dead meet.
Islam also refers to Abraham, who is considered an important prophet and here God offered his son Ishmael as a sacrifice.
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The rock in the Dome of the Rock - sacred for both Muslims and Jews
Photo: Thomas Coex / AFP
The legend of the Prophet Mohammed's night journey is particularly significant.
It is only mentioned briefly in a Koran sura, but has come down to us in many different ways in other sources.
Accordingly, one night Mohammed rode from Mecca on his heavenly horse al-Burak to the "distant place of prayer", which is interpreted as the location of the al-Aqsa mosque.
He tied his magic horse to a wall - allegedly to the Western Wall, which is why it is called the "Burak Wall" in the Arab world.
The following ascension is reminiscent of that of Jesus.
During the ascent, the prophet is said to have left a footprint on the rock, which pilgrims believe they can still recognize there today.
The parallels to Christian and Jewish traditions can be interpreted as a strategy in the competition between religions: Existing stories and traditions are changed, reinterpreted, and thus hijacked.
With the Ascension, God "wanted to connect the Holy Land with Islam", declared the Iman of the al-Aqsa mosque in 1996.
"The Temple Mount is in our hands"
The competition for the Temple Mount took an even more dramatic turn.
Jewish pilgrims had access to the Western Wall before Israel was founded in 1948.
After that, however, East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control, which did not recognize the State of Israel and kept believers out.
With the victory in the Six Day War in 1967 that changed fundamentally: "The Temple Mount is in our hands", the Israeli commander Mordechai Gur shouted triumphantly to the soldiers over the radio when his unit had conquered East Jerusalem on June 7, 1967.
Even more secular Jews overwhelmedly interpreted victory as a divine sign.
"We have returned to our most holy places never to leave," said Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.
Israeli soldiers in June 1967 after the conquest of East Jerusalem stared at the Western Wall - and 40 years later at the same place
Photo: David Rubinger / AFP
But Dayan quickly had the Israeli flag, which soldiers proudly hoisted on the Temple Mount, removed.
He did not want to religiously charge a political conflict or fuel an explosive inner-Jewish dispute: Ultra-Orthodox Jews are convinced that Jews are not allowed to enter the mountain because it is unclear where exactly the Holy of Holies was once located.
They fear that a believer could accidentally enter this holy place, desecrate it - and thereby attract divine wrath.
Ultra-Orthodox therefore also reject the construction of a third temple.
God alone can do that.
Nationally religious Jews, on the other hand, want to help the work of God a little in order to hasten the end-time arrival of the Messiah.
"When we arrived on the Temple Mount," wrote Shlomo Goren, chief rabbi of the Israeli army in 1967, "I blew the shofar horn and bowed in the direction of the Holy of Holies, as was customary in the days when the temple was still standing. "
Goren entered the Dome of the Rock and circled the "Creation Stone" with a Torah scroll.
Dayan soon banned such a thing, transferred the administration of the Islamic sites to the Jordanian Waqf Foundation and guaranteed freedom of religion.
Jews should be allowed to enter the Temple Mount, but not pray there.
Israel is still responsible for the Western Wall and security on the mountain.
A magnet for religious zealots
Political provocateurs and religious zealots have since often undermined this fragile regulation.
On the commemoration day of the destruction of the Second Temple in 1967, Rabbi Goren built a temporary synagogue between the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque and held a service.
The Minister for Religious Affairs, Zerach Wahrhaftig, stressed that the mountain legally belongs to the Jews and is "not so holy" for Muslims.
On the other hand, Islamic scholars have often claimed that there is no evidence that a temple ever stood there.
The Temple Mount attracted both confused and religious fanatics with ominous power: An Australian Christian set fire to the al-Aqsa mosque in 1969 and destroyed valuable works of art.
13 years later, an American volunteer in the Israeli army wanted to "liberate" the mountain.
He shot his way to the Dome of the Rock with an assault rifle, killed two people and holed up in the Dome of the Rock.
Several other conspiracies have since been foiled and led to unrest in the Muslim world.
There were detailed plans by Jewish extremists to blow up the Dome of the Rock.
The twisted logic: That would trigger a war and kill and drive out so many Muslims that nothing would stand in the way of the arrival of the Messiah and the beginning of the eternal kingdom.
This kingdom needs a third temple;
The "Temple Institute" has been promoting the building in the old town for decades and is collecting funds.
Years ago, another organization created a detailed temple model for US $ 20,000 and distributed photo montages: the mountain with temple - without cathedral and mosque.
These are religious marginalized groups, but the dispute continues 20 years after Sharon's visit.
The activist Jehuda Glick, who regularly prays on the mountain and wants to perform religious ceremonies there - a provocation for Muslims - was gunned down by a Palestinian in 2014.
He survived seriously injured.
Most recently, in September 2020, a newly discovered pit caused a stir.
The waqf filled them with concrete.
Religious Jews accused the authorities again of destroying ancient artifacts: the pit could have been the entrance to a cave from the time of the Second Temple.
Icon: The mirror