The new Israeli Minister of National Security and figure of the extreme right, Itamar Ben Gvir, went early on Tuesday to the esplanade of the Mosques.
He made this trip to this holy place at the heart of tensions in East Jerusalem, despite threats from Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement.
"Our government will not give in to Hamas' threats," Itamar Ben Gvir said on Tuesday after Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip enclave, called the minister's intention to visit the esplanade " prelude to an escalation in the region”.
The third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site in Judaism known as the "Temple Mount", the esplanade is located in the Old City of Jerusalem, in the Palestinian sector occupied and annexed by Israel.
Under a historical status quo, non-Muslims can go there at specific times but cannot pray there.
However, in recent years, a growing number of Jews, often nationalists, surreptitiously pray there, a gesture denounced as a “provocation” by the Palestinians.
“The Jews will also go up to the Temple Mount”
Itamar Ben Gvir, who went there several times when he was an MP, had announced his intention to go there as minister.
“Our Palestinian people will continue to defend their holy sites and the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem promised on Tuesday, calling the visit a “crime.”
“The Temple Mount is the most important place for the people of Israel, we maintain freedom of movement for Muslims and Christians, but the Jews will also climb the Temple Mount and those who threaten must be treated with a iron fist,” added Itamar Ben Gvir.
In 2000, the visit to the esplanade by Ariel Sharon, then head of the Israeli right-wing opposition, was seen as a provocation by the Palestinians.
The next day, bloody clashes opposed Palestinians and Israeli police, marking the start of the second Intifada (Palestinian uprising, 2000-2005).
In May 2021, violence in East Jerusalem, especially on the esplanade, was the prelude to an eleven-day war between Hamas and Israel.
A trained lawyer living in one of the most radical settlements in the occupied West Bank, Itamar Ben Gvir became a minister in December 2022 in the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the most right-wing in the country's history.
He defends Israel's annexation of the West Bank, where 2.9 million Palestinians and 475,000 Israelis live, in settlements deemed illegal under international law.
He also advocates the transfer of a part of the Arab population of Israel, considered disloyal, to neighboring countries, and often goes where the tensions are the strongest, putting, according to his detractors, the fire to the powder.