The Joint Committee of Temple Organizations condemned on Wednesday the closure of the Temple Mount to non- Muslim visitors for the last two weeks of Ramadan.
According to the committee, an association of right-wing groups seeking to assert Jewish prayer rights as well as Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount, access to the site during the Muslim holy month has always been granted in previous years, although on a slightly reduced scale compared to the rest of the year.
Outside of Ramadan, the Temple Mount is usually open to non-Muslims for three hours every morning and one hour in the afternoon, while during Ramadan it has previously been open only in the morning.
This year, however, all access to non-Muslim visitors has been prohibited in the two final weeks of Ramadan.
According to Rabbi Yehuda Glick, a spokesman for the committee, in previous years the Temple Mount has been open in the morning to non- Muslims for the entirety of Ramadan.
Glick attributed the change in policy to a new phenomenon in which hundreds of Palestinian youths have slept at the site during this year’s Ramadan.
This year, the site was open in the morning for the first two weeks, although Jewish visitors were harassed and verbally abused, which led the police to evacuate them on several occasions.
Guess what? Threats and harassment work! Muslims have managed to turn Judaism's holiest site into a Muslim-only zone.
If the police wanted to avoid riots, they should ban the potential rioters, not the innocent victims. Rewarding abuse and harassment is the best recipe to increase it.
And how is the Arabic media reporting it?
Saudi Arabia's Al Yaum writes:
Israeli authorities raised the state of alert in Jerusalem and has increased the number of troops, and tightened their siege on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and banned settlers from daily visits to the mosque until the night of the Qadr, which falls next Sunday.As usual - pocketing the gains and then complaining that it is not enough.