The Jewish people will be allowed to pray freely at their holiest site, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, according to a controversial bill proposed by Labor MK and former Jerusalem city councilman Hilik Bar.This is being heavily reported in Arabic media, which add that the bill would also allow Jews to ascend through other gates besides the Mughrabi (Rambam) gate that they use today.
Currently, Jews are allowed to enter the Temple Mount but are watched closely to ensure that they do not pray there so as to not violate the status quo of the site as a Muslim prayer area with two large mosques. Visits to the mount by rightwing politicians have led to rioting and arrests.
“The love for the Jewish religion, the Torah, historic and Zionist values, and for Jerusalem and its holy sites is not the property of the Right even if sometimes tries to paint that picture,” Bar said. “The Right was allowed to take ownership of Zionism, Judaism and the attachment to Jerusalem for too long.
"Labor and I are part of the Zionist Center-Left that sees our holy sites as the basis of our existence and the essence of our history.”
Bar said Jews and Muslims praying at the same site was part of the coexistence and religious freedom that the Left believes in. He said the bill could be implemented gradually and carefully to allow people to adjust to it, noting that the Supreme Court had ruled that Jewish prayer should not be limited without concrete warnings of an immediate security risk.
“The time has come once and for all to neutralize the explosive political issue of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount,” Bar said. “There is no reason that every time a rightwing MK ascends the mount to pray there will be a political drama with a third intifada threatened. There needs to be a new order in which everyone respects the rights of the other side.”
Regev said Jews should be allowed on the mount with prayer shawls, phylacteries, and the four species on Succot.
Labor leader Isaac Herzog said he opposed the bill and would try to persuade Bar not to advance the legislation.
Times of Israel says:
The Palestinian Authority response to a proposed Knesset bill that would allow Jewish prayer on Temple Mount may exacerbate the already fraught issue by apparently misrepresenting the bill as a bid to allow Jewish worship inside the Al Aqsa MosqueIt is funny how Arabs who are so eager to talk to the West about "rights" suddenly change their tune when the rights being talked about are Jewish rights.
Palestinian officials attacked the bill as an attempt to change the status quo inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque — a structure dating back to the seventh century and considered the third-holiest site in Islam — and warned of grave repercussions if such a law were to pass.
Mohammad al-Madani, chairman of the Palestinian Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society and a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, said in a message sent to journalists on Sunday that any permission Israel granted Jews “to pray in the Al-Aqsa mosque would direly escalate the situation in the region and may lead to fierce confrontation not only between Israel and the Palestinian people, but also between Israel and the Arab and Islamic worlds.”
“The Palestinian people as well as the Arab and Islamic worlds strenuously reject all Israeli violations of the sanctity of Islamic and Christian holy places,” the message read.
...Fayez Abbas, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, denied that the bill was being misrepresented by Palestinian commentators as referring to Jewish prayer inside the mosque rather than in Temple Mount as a whole. He said that the term Al-Aqsa is simply used by Palestinians as shorthand for the entire plaza, known in Arabic as Al-Haram A-Sharif.
“They mean the entire plaza,” he asserted.
It is also funny how so-called "human rights" NGOs will never, ever promote the simple right of Jews to worship in their own holiest spot - even though international law would seem to clearly support such a right.