JERUSALEM: Ultra-nationalist rabbis on Monday visited Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, which is holy to both Muslims and Jews, in a move likely to infuriate Palestinians, police said.
Police authorized the visit and escorted the rabbis, a spokesman said.
The 43 rabbis, most of them West Bank settlers, were also accompanied by two far right-wing MPs, the YNet News website reported.
The controversial visit was staged ahead of Jerusalem Day on Wednesday, when Israel celebrates its capture of Arab east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War.
The vast compound, which dominates the Jewish Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, is the third most sacred for Muslims.
The site of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, it is the most sacred for Jews.
“The rabbis’ visit is meant to remind us of the essence of Jerusalem Day — it is not the Western Wall that is our souls’ desire, but what lies beyond it the Temple Mount, the site of our Temple,” YNet quoted MP Uri Ariel as saying.
Jews are forbidden from praying at the site and, because of their own religious restrictions, many choose not to visit the site. Those who do are viewed with suspicion by Muslims and risk being pelted with stones.
Muslims are intensely sensitive to any perceived threat to the status of the compound and many believe Jews are determined to build a new temple on the wide esplanade.
Jewish fringe groups have vowed to build a third Temple, but Israeli political and religious authorities have repeatedly dismissed the idea.
