On the Temple Mount, big changes are brewing over a small fire. Thus in recent years the taboo on Jewish prayers on the mountain has been broken; Thus two more mosques were erected on the mountain in the 1990s (in the stables of Solomon and al-Aqsa) and another in the 2000s, at the Gate of Mercy; In the same way, Jordan became Israel's partner in managing the mountain. And so it may be happening now. In recent months, three more processes have taken place on the mountain, seemingly unrelated to each other, with their own rhythm, which it is not yet known where they will roll, but it is very worthwhile to pay attention to them.
The first process is intertwined with events in which the police, for the first time, choose to turn a blind eye to isolated individuals or small groups, who sing the national anthem - Hatikva - in the mountain areas. This chain of events, almost imperceptible, may hint at another turnaround at one of the most sensitive sites in the world. It is conducted - somewhat similar to the way the informal prayers of Jews on the mountain began - at a pace one step forward and two backwards, and sometimes the other way around.
The prayers of the Jews on the mountain, which the court even recognized for the first time this week, have become an almost daily reality in recent years and broke a 50-year-old taboo forbidding Jews from praying in the holy places. (Formerly "Students for the Temple Mount"), do not hide their hope that this is indeed the case.
The second process is a series of knife attacks at the mountain gates, which gradually replaces the Nablus Gate, the "gate of the martyrs" according to the Palestinians, as the favorite site for the "martyrs" in Jerusalem. These attacks were intended to "save al-Aqsa" from the "herds of settlers invading the mountain" - that is, from the visitors and worshipers there, from those who sing "Hatikva" there, and in general, from the Israeli and Jewish sovereignty that "defiles the compound's Muslimness." These attacks also expose the soft underbelly of the police at this sensitive site - the absence of the magnetometers, those stupid metal detectors placed at the mountain gates after the July 2017 shooting attack and removed almost immediately, to the sound of thunderous Palestinian protest.
Many stabbing attacks that have taken place at the gates of the holy compound in recent years have come out of the Temple Mount. Some of the perpetrators were equipped with knives that they managed to sneak into the mountain, or with knives they obtained inside. They passed through the mountain on their way to an attack outside its gates, to be religiously charged; To pray there is a "last prayer" before the attack on the Jews, when they consider the possibility that they will not return from it.
The third process is a growing preoccupation with the southern faction of the Islamic Movement, which is represented by the Prime Minister in the government, on the issue of al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount. To the "civil agenda", and to prove that it has not abandoned its religious and national principles, chief among them "the protection of al-Aqsa."
These three processes embarrass the political and security echelons. They also reveal fissures and differences in attitudes and views, especially between the Minister of Internal Security, a member of the Labor Party, Amar Bar-Lev, and the high levels of command in Jerusalem. These find it difficult to turn the wheel back, as Minister Bar-Lev demands of them, especially with regard to the matter of the Jews' prayers on the mountain.
The attitude of Gilad Ardan, Bar-Lev's predecessor in the position in which the change took place, was sympathetic to the turnaround.
His successor in office, Amir Ohana, came to terms with the existing one.
Bar-Lev seeks to "straighten out" the status quo and implement the prohibition of Jewish prayers on the mountain without any compromises and rounding corners.
At least some senior police officials believe that after the horses leave the stable, an attempt to get them back there - that is, to stop the rather restrictive prayers of Jews on the mountain - will cause several times more commotion.
A knife from a police stabbing attempt, near the chain gate,
"Religious worship is not defined"
The story of the song "Hope" on the mountain should begin in the middle of the previous decade. The police then made sure to stay away from the mountain, delay the investigation and especially systematically thwart any attempt to sing the anthem instead, even though the legal basis for this is vague. One justice of the peace, David Shaul Gabay Richter, even defined the singing of the anthem on the mountain in 2016 as a demonstrative act that could violate public peace.
The change was brought about by a group of students led by Tom Nissani, 33, a native of the Jezreel Valley, a former permanent member who has been active for many years in the struggle for Jews to ascend the mountain, and Ofir Dayan, a political activist and daughter of former Israeli Consul in New York Danny Dayan. Yad Vashem Management).
Nissani was removed from the mountain time and time again when he insisted on singing "Hatikva" there, even when it was in memory of Ari Fuld, one of the regular immigrants to the mountain, who was murdered in 2018 in Gush Etzion. Superintendent Yoram Halevi, then commander of the Jerusalem district, wrote to Nissani that his removal from the mountain was necessary "to prevent injury to life and property."
Ophir Dayan says that until then she used to sing privately and did not tease the anthem on the mountain dozens of times, and only from that stage did the mountain police begin to notice a "phenomenon" - both when it was about her and when it was about others. "The claim that we are endangering public order is a joke," Dayan claims, "because the song of hope on the mountain did not bother anyone until then." In the past year, tensions between Dayan and the police have reached a peak. In July she was again removed from the mountain and summoned for a reprimand and briefing at a police station on what is allowed and forbidden on the mountain, but refused to come.
In the end, after the intervention of a lawyer, Adv. Itamar Barkai, and the activities of Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and MK Sharan Hashakel, the conversation took place at the entrance to one of the mountain gates.
Dayan informed the police there that she would continue to sing "Hatikva" on Mt.
Immediately afterwards, she went in there once more and sang "Hope" again, this time with her mother.
The cops turned a blind eye.
"Since then I have sung Hatikva 5-4 more times, and no one has bothered me," says Dayan.
"Perhaps they understood that the national anthem is not a 'religious worship' that is forbidden to Jews on the mountain," she volunteers an interpretation.
Even when Tom Nissani, Akiva Ariel and Maayan Barbie from the Bydino movement recently sang the anthem on the mountain, the police observed from a distance and did not intervene.
The singing was solid, in a relatively low voice, but there is no doubt that the cops saw, understood and ignored.
Only on the last Tisha B'Av, "Hatikva" sang on the mountain, which was also attended by MK Amichai Shikli and former MK Shuli Mualem, was more demonstrative and in light of the cameras.
A demonstrative act.
MK Shikli and Shuli Mualem sing on the Temple Mount / Photo: Arnon Segal,
Shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah
Nissani and Ariel want to believe that these are the buds of change, similar to what happened at the beginning of the long road, which led to a turnaround in the matter of prayer.
Mr. Barkai says there is no law and existing regulations is no ban on national anthem on the Mount. Arnon Segal, a prominent activist Mount else, rather inclined to adopt the police interpretation, that it Episodios point "do not indicate a new policy.
Minister of Public Security explained Recently on several occasions that the ban on singing hope on the mountain is not fixed by law, but is part of the procedures that have been practiced on the mountain for years.
The singing of the anthem on the mountain is not the only innovation on the Temple Mount in recent months.
A record number of Jews - about 6,000 - ascended Mount Elul and Tishrei.
Some of them prayed there, some tried to raise Israeli flags and were immediately removed.
The last time, about a week ago, it was Lauren Isaac, a newcomer from Canada, who declared: "Sometimes you have to break the rules to do the right thing."
For the first time in 54 years, shofar blasts were heard on the mountain on Rosh Hashanah about a month ago.
Police removed the two poachers from the mountain.
It also detained Jews who hit the mountain in the Arava on the day of Hoshana Rabba, and those who tried to sneak the four species to the mountain on Sukkot.
The terrorists wanted to be "religiously charged."
Stabbing scene / Photo: EP,
Imitation shows
At the same time, the knife attacks on the mountain gates are becoming frequent. On Friday, two weeks ago, it was Asra Hazimia, 30, from the town of Kabatiya, married and a mother of four, who came out of the Temple Mount armed with a knife and tried to stab police officers near the chain gate. They shot her to death. About a month ago, it was Hazem al-Julani, 50, director of the College of Complementary Medicine in East Jerusalem, who tried to stab a policeman near the Lions' Gate and was also shot dead.
Just this week, an indictment was filed in the Haifa District Court against Alaa Zahad, 25, a resident of Baqa al-Gharbiya, who allegedly planned, a few weeks ago, to stab a policeman or a soldier in the area of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, among other things due to mental distress.
Attempts to attack the mountain, around the mountain and its gates intensified greatly after the shooting attack carried out on the mountain by three terrorists from Umm al-Fahm in July 2017. Two policemen were killed in this attack, and in the months before that four attacks were recorded on the Temple Mount, killing all attackers. After the deadly attack in July, the GSS thwarted two more shooting attacks by Umm al-Fahm residents, ISIS supporters, on the mountain. They planned to shoot at Jewish police and visitors.
A year later (August 2018), at the gate of the Mashgiach on the Temple Mount, Ahmad Muhammad Mahamid of Umm al-Fahm, armed with a knife he had previously inserted into the mountain unhindered, attacked a policeman and was shot to death.
In 2019, too, there were at least two similar terrorist attacks; In August, two 14-year-old boys from al-Azariah ran out of the Temple Mount through the Chain Gate, stabbing a policeman who was guarding the gate with knives. One of them was shot to death. In September, a 12.5-year-old boy, also from Al-Azaria, attacked a policewoman with a long knife, with whom he entered the mountain, near the chain gate.
Similar incidents occurred in January 2020, when two young Palestinians were arrested while trying to pull out a knife, and in February of that year, when a terrorist resident of Haifa got out of a taxi at the Tribal Gate and fired a gun at the local police. He was killed by gunfire from other police officers.
These mountain attacks, it is important to note, involve both Palestinian residents of Judea and Samaria and Israeli Arabs, just as bodies such as Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and Israeli Arabs have been involved in the public and media coverage of everything on the mountain for years
. Religious and nationalist, but all drain into the narrative of "Al-Aqsa in Danger", which must be saved and rescued from Israel and the Jews. Recover it.
The imitation and copying are also intertwined with the reactions of the Arab parties in Israel and the Monitoring Committee of Israeli Arabs to what is happening on the Temple Mount, and are increasingly similar to those of Hamas, Turkey, Jordan or the PA, and even compete with them. It is the Ra'am party, which has greatly increased its involvement in al-Aqsa and al-Haram a-Sharif (the name of the Temple Mount according to the Muslims).
Sheikh Abu Deabs / Photo: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The southern faction of the Islamic Movement, and the RAAM, which represents it politically, speak of Muslim exclusivity in the holy compound, warn of a "destructive war of religion," and warn the state and police of "ongoing violations and escalations against al-Aqsa Mosque by extremist settlers, including Prayers, marriage ceremonies and the blowing of the shofar, all under the protection of the "occupation police."
But Ra'am's occupation of the mountain is not merely declarative. Al-Aqsa, which has an affinity for Ra'am and the southern faction, funds thousands of buses that take Israeli Arabs to the mountain. The head of the Shura Council (Council of Sages) of Ra'am, Sheikh Abu Deabs, recently attended the conference, alongside the chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Akram Sabri, as part of training mentors for training in al-Aqsa (exposure of an organization "Go Jerusalem").
Sabri is identified with Hamas, with the northern and illegal faction of the Islamic Movement and with Erdogan's Turkey. Abu Dabas, one of the participants in the Marmara flotilla, who only recently described the Taliban victory in Afghanistan as a "big step in the long run", had previously attended a protest rally in Umm al-Fahm after the northern faction was outlawed. The same rally was opened at a time of silence for the martyrs mentioned by the Prime Minister last week, Palestinian flags were hoisted and the slogan "We will sacrifice our lives for the sake of al-Aqsa" was played.
Abu Daabs, like some of the leaders of the RAAM, continues to maintain good relations with the leaders of the northern faction and participated in protests against the arrest of some of its leaders, after disturbances committed by Arabs on Jews in the mixed cities last May. Of Prime Minister Bennett in Umm al-Fahm as "Respect for the Martyrs of October 2000", touches on a root that connects the Prime Minister and the southern faction to the all-Muslim cause that is so central today - "the protection and defense of al-Aqsa."
These were the real culprits for the events of October 2000, as the leaders of the riots at the time, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the northern faction, testified.
The RAAM insists to this day to remember and mention this.