Simmering tensions over ancient Jerusalem site nearing a boil
JERUSALEM — Glimmering over Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex’s ancient golden dome exudes a serenity that stands in stark contrast to an earthly tug-of-war over who should worship at the holy site.
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A flashpoint for violence in recent decades, a once-fringe movement that is seeking to end the compound’s Islamic governance, allow non-Muslims to pray there and even one day build a new Jewish temple on the site is gaining traction within the Israeli government and also among some American evangelical Christians.
The Temple Mount movement — a loose coalition of Israeli religious and nationalist organizations — harbors a potentially explosive mix of prophecy and politics that aims to upend some 1,300 years of Muslim control over the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest one for Jews.
“Muslims are allowed to sing, unfortunately tourists are not yet allowed to sing,” U.S.-born rabbi Yehudah Glick and one of the movement’s leaders, told NBC News as he led a tour of some 20 people around the compound last month. “One of our major battles is to change that situation and to be allowed to sing and pray on the mountain.”
Throughout the tour, Glick quoted from holy texts including the Bible’s Book of Zechariah, which prophesies God’s return to Jerusalem. He also asked his party to envision the first and second Jewish temples that once stood here, as described in ancient Hebrew texts.
Among those in his group were evangelical Christians, some of whom are drawn by the belief that God promised the land of Israel to the Jews, who would rule it until the return of Jesus to Jerusalem for the rapture and to lead their ascent to Heaven.
Cydney Galbraith, a designer from Canada who was on Glick’s tour, said she believed divine intervention would force Muslims out of the complex.
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“I think the Lord is going to do something so unusual that our minds can’t conceive,” said Galbraith, who describes herself as a Christian Zionist. “And we’re going to watch him push them out. He’s going to totally drive them out.”
For his part, Glick advocates for a future temple that is a “house of prayer for all nations” and not exclusively Jewish, Christian or Muslim.
‘Very naive’
Even the idea that the compound could become a shared space belies the political reality of modern Israel, according to Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher with the Israeli rights group Ir Amim, which documents conflict in Jerusalem and advocates for all of the city’s residents.
Pointing to the fact that most Palestinians live under occupation and the people of east Jerusalem are effectively denied political representation, he said the idea of sharing the compound “is very twisted.”
“Any place that Jewish settlers, Israeli settlers, and the Israeli government put their eyes on, the thing is to expel Palestinians from it,” he said, referring to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and evictions of Palestinian families in east Jerusalem. “To think that in the most holiest place, most contested place, things will be different is very naive.”
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