National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem Sunday, declaring it a demonstration of Israel’s ownership of the flashpoint holy site and drawing fierce condemnations from Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states.

The last time Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount, in January, there was a furious backlash from the Arab world and Jordan summoned Israel’s ambassador for a dressing down.

“We are in charge here,” Ben Gvir declared as he toured the site. “I am happy to go up to the Temple Mount, the most important place for the Jewish people.”

Ben Gvir praised the Israel Police for its administration of Jewish visits to the holy site, which, he said, “prove who is in charge in Jerusalem.”

“All of the threats from Hamas don’t matter. We are in charge in Jerusalem and in all of the Land of Israel,” he declared, referring to the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian terror group that has threatened Israel with action if the so-called status quo on the Temple Mount is changed.

Palestinian Authority presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh called Ben-Gvir’s visit a “blatant attack” on the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount. Jordan’s Foreign Ministry called it “a provocative step that is condemned, and a dangerous and unacceptable escalation.” Neighboring Egypt, which like Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, also issued a condemnation.

Israel captured the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s Old City from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. However, it allowed the Jordanian Waqf to continue to maintain religious authority atop the Mount. Under their 1994 peace treaty, Israel recognized Amman’s “special role… in Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem.”

The site is considered the holiest in the Judaism, as the location of two biblical temples, while the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Mount is the third-holiest shrine in Islam, turning the area into a major flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Under the status quo, an arrangement that has prevailed for decades in cooperation with Jordan, Jews and other non-Muslims are permitted to visit the Temple Mount during certain hours but may not pray there. In recent years, Jewish religious nationalists, including members of the new governing coalition, have increasingly visited the site and demanded equal prayer rights for Jews there, infuriating the Palestinians and Muslims around the world.

During his visit Sunday, Ben Gvir noted his party’s demands for more budgeting to increase the Jewish presence in the Negev and Galilee, alluding to the fact that those areas have large Arab populations.

“In the coming budget we must invest in the Negev and Galilee,” he said. “Jerusalem is our soul, the Negev and Galilee are our life force. We must act there, we must be sovereigns also in the Negev and in the Galilee, and the basis is the budget.”

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com