Yehuda Glick Wants To Ascend The Temple Mount Again

Temple Minded: Likud MK Yehuda Glick has championed the rights of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock mosque stands. Image by Getty Images, Montage: Kurt Hoffman

By Naomi Zeveloff April 3, 2017

Yehuda Glick wants to go back to the Temple Mount.

Glick, an Israeli lawmaker with the ruling Likud party, has filed a petition with the High Court to allow parliament members to visit the politically explosive site holy to both Jews and Muslims.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blocked parliament members from visiting the Temple Mount since November 2015 in order to calm violence in Jerusalem over Muslim fears of a Jewish takeover of the site.

In 2015 and 2016 a spate of car rammings, stabbings and shootings at the hands of Palestinians against Israeli Jews were linked to Temple Mount tensions.

Glick, Israel’s foremost activist for Jewish prayer rights at the Temple Mount, hasn’t been able to ascend the site since last May, when he was sworn in as a member of the Israeli parliament.

He called the ban “insufferable,” in a press conference outside the High Court, the Times of Israel reported.

The Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, is administered by a Muslim religious organization. Jews can visit but can’t pray there, a rule that Israel enforces in order to maintain the fragile status quo at the site.

Contact Naomi Zeveloff at [email protected]

Naomi Zeveloff is the former Middle East correspondent of the Forward, primarily covering Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

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