How one trivial Israeli ruling could ignite the Temple Mount – and beyond

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A lower court’s decisions on releases from detention are usually of minimal importance among judicial decisions. Since the founding of the state, one can assume, there has been no decision that has caused such a storm as that by Judge Zion Saharay.

The judge revoked the restraining order from Temple Mount of three Jews who bowed and said a prayer at the site. Within two hours of the ruling’s publication, it garnered responses from the Jordanian government, the Palestinian Authority president, the Hamas spokesman and the prime minister of Israel – and that’s a partial list. It graced the front page of all Palestinian newspapers on Monday morning.

To temple and Temple Mount activists, this ruling is a major victory, and another crimp in the status-quo on Temple Mount, where Jewish prayer is forbidden. To Palestinians, it is proof-positive of the Israeli plot to push Muslims off the mountain in order to turn it into a Jewish place of worship. To Hamas, it’s a golden opportunity to repeat last year’s achievement of linking East Jerusalem to the Gaza Strip. To Bennett’s fragile coalition, the ruling is yet another headache, and to the Police it is a significant threat ahead of Jerusalem Day, which will take place next week.

On Monday, the impact of the ruling was already palpable on the Temple Mount. The police officer who receives Jewish visitors was distressed during his briefing at the Mughrabi Gate. Until Sunday, the briefing included an explicit warning against praying. On Monday morning, the officer stammered, got confused, and asked his partner for help. “We can’t do anything that… of course… uh, how did they call it?” – “Can’t do anything that disturbs public order,” the other officer clarified.

On the mountain, confusion continued to reign. At least three visitors bowed down while the policeman looked the other way. But another, who did so at a location apparently too exposed to Muslim onlookers, was detained and removed from the mountain. At the same time, at the southeastern corner, hidden from view, police again allowed Jews to pray quietly, as they have been doing for about a year. Today the police are expected to appeal to the district court in an attempt to reverse Sunday’s ruling, so it can resume removing those who pray.

Palestinians gather for Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, last month.Mahmoud Illean /AP

Even before Judge Saharay’s ruling, social media was full of calls by temple activists to come to the Temple Mount this coming Sunday, on Jerusalem Day. At the same time, while Arab social media is full of calls to come and “protect Al-Aqsa from the invaders.” The judge’s ruling has poured fuel on this fire, and both sides are using it to coax their supporters to the mountain. With these conditions, we may wake up on Sunday morning to another round of violent clashes on the Temple Mount, as we did almost every morning during Ramadan last month. And this is before the clashes that might break out around the Flag March, scheduled for that afternoon.

The Temple Mount status-quo is in essence a set of unwritten rules which conflict with the dry letter of the law. It was created and maintained by the political echelon since 1967 – because it is the only way to avoid bloodshed until there is a lasting solution. Its simplest formulation is what then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to say in 2015, under American pressure, after another round of violence at the holy site: “The Temple Mount is a place of worship for Muslims and a place to visit for non-Muslims.” Taking into account that a prime minister’s statement is not a law, it’s completely understandable why Judge Saharay rejected the claim that bowing down and saying a prayer at a holy site constitute criminal offenses. The situation on the Temple Mount certainly engenders legal and constitutional absurdities.

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But the situation seems absurd and illogical to us only because of the right-wing campaign, which has detached Temple Mount from its context. The Temple Mount is not rooted in outer space. It’s in East Jerusalem, between the Muslim Quarter and Silwan. There are far greater legal absurdities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank than a prohibition on prayer. Millions who live under military rule without rights, for example, and that 40 percent of the residents of the state’s capital are not citizens of the state. If we return Temple Mount to its place, within the whole of the occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then we shall also put the absurd prohibition of saying a prayer at that particular place in the proper context. With all due respect to the freedom of worship of a handful of Jews on the Temple Mount, it does not outweigh the right of millions of Palestinians to freedom and equality, and isn’t worth the blood that will be shed over it.