Israeli firebrand Ben Gvir challenges Netanyahu on Temple Mount

Israel’s controversial National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited the al Aqsa Mosque compound on the Temple Mount on Tuesday, a religious and political provocation that threatens to fracture Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

“The bunch of irresponsible extremists in the government is trying to drag Israel to an all-out regional war,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said after Ben Gvir led a group of politicians and worshippers to the holy site. “These people can’t run a country.”

Netanyahu emphasized that Ben Gvir does not run the country and so lacks the authority to flout the “status quo” — an arrangement in which the site is administered by an Islamic organization, which reserves the site for Muslims. Yet Ben Gvir responded with a direct challenge to Netanyahu’s authority, at the risk of inflaming not only the security situation but the fraying ties that bind the prime minister’s coalition government together.

“The policy of the national security minister is to allow freedom of worship for Jews everywhere, including the Temple Mount, and Jews will continue to do so in the future as well,” Ben Gvir said Tuesday. “The Temple Mount is a sovereign area in the State of Israel’s capital.”

Ben Gvir’s promenade through the site, a holy place for both Judaism and Islam, outraged local and international Arab leaders as well as other members of the coalition government. “There is no private policy of any minister — not the National Security Minister or any other minister — on the Temple Mount,” Netanyahu said in a statement amid the uproar. “This morning’s incident on the Temple Mount deviated from the status quo. Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount has not changed; this is how it has been and this is how it will be.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team echoed Netanyahu’s condemnation. “We certainly are paying close attention to actions and activities that we find to be a detraction from Israel’s security, a contributor to greater insecurity and instability in the region, and that would certainly be the actions that we saw today that Mr. Ben-Gvir participated in,” State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said Tuesday. “Any unilateral action like this that jeopardizes such status quo is unacceptable. And not only is it unacceptable, it detracts from what we think is a vital time as we are working to get this ceasefire deal across the finish line.”

Ben Gvir has made multiple trips to the Temple Mount amid the war in Gaza despite Netanyahu’s objections. The latest visit came at an especially fraught moment for Israeli security officials and civil society as U.S. and Arab mediators are trying to finalize a ceasefire deal that would involve the release of hostages held by Hamas and perhaps alleviate the threat of an attack on Israel by Iran.

“The repeated attempts to undermine the religious and historical status of Al-Aqsa Mosque are not only an attack on the Palestinians but on millions of Muslims around the world,” the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is helping to broker the negotiations, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Ministry warns of the impact of these violations on the ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, and urged the international community to take urgent action to stop these attacks.”

Ben Gvir, an opponent of the ceasefire deal who wants Netanyahu to annex the Gaza Strip, used his appearance at the compound to protest the ceasefire negotiations.

“We come … to commemorate the destruction of the Temple,” Ben Gvir said in a video recorded in the compound. “We must win this war and not go to conferences in Doha or Cairo but defeat them — bring them to their knees. This is the message. We can defeat Hamas.”

Although Ben Gvir framed the trek as a triumph of religious nationalism for pious Jews, his ultranationalist faction is at odds with the Chief Rabbinate, which regards the Temple Mount as the place of “the Holy of Holies” in the ancient temple and thus a place where no one but the high priest could enter under Jewish law.

“The damage to the sanctity of Temple Mount and the status quo is not of interest to Minister Ben Gvir,” said Moshe Gafni, one of the leaders of the United Torah Judaism party. “The damage it causes to the Jewish people is unbearably great. … We will have to check with our rabbis whether we can be partners with him, and we will make this clear to the prime minister as well.”

The UTJ has seven votes in Netanyahu’s 64-member coalition government. The prime minister needs a minimum of 61 votes to have a majority in the Israeli Knesset, which has 120 members total.

“Ben Gvir’s election campaign at the Temple Mount, which completely goes against the stance of security officials, during a war, is endangering the lives of Israeli citizens and the lives of our soldiers and police officers,” Lapid said.