Is the al-Aqsa Mosque in Danger?

For the first time in history, Israel’s ruling elites and an incoming US administration may be aligned on taking over the mosque.

Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has said he would build a Jewish synagogue at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound if he could. (Photo: Itamar Ben-Gvir, Twitter)

Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called for the construction of a third Jewish Temple on the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque at a 2018 speech in Jerusalem.

The former Fox & Friends co-host declared that a step in the process of building the Third Temple “is the recognition that facts on the ground truly matter.” His comments drew applause even if his words amounted to a call for the destruction of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the most inflammatory remarks made by any proposed member of the Trump cabinet thus far.

In August 2024, Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir echoed Hegseth’s plea, saying he would build a Jewish synagogue at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound [Haram al-Sharif] if he could. 

Such threats on the third holiest site in Islam and the crown Jewel of Palestine have a long history replete with violence and bloodshed. As early as the 19th century, the German Rabbi and pro-Zionist Tzevi Hirsch Kalischer (1796–1874) called for the renewal of the Passover Sacrifice on the Temple Mount, the site of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque today.

It was for this reason that, over the last two centuries, many Jews tried to buy an exterior wall of the Haram al-Sharif known as “the Western Wall.” Moses Montefiore tried  to buy it in 1827. Edmond de Rothschild tried to buy it in 1887, but with a twist. He also wanted the Maghrebi neighborhood in front of it in what evolved into a key principle of Zionism: expansion as security.

By the 1920s, the Zionist objective was to "quietly evacuate the Moroccan occupants of those houses which it would later be necessary to demolish" to create more space for Jewish worshippers.

In 1927, the leader of the Zionist militia in Palestine Yosef Hecht planted a bomb in the home of a Palestinian family in the Maghrebi neighborhood, destroying it, causing panic and even the flight of some families from the area, foreshadowing darker days to come.

This set the stage for the most dramatic escalation in violence to date, the 1929 Riots. In the weeks leading up to the riots, Zionist leaders issued statements in support of ethnically cleansing Palestinian Arabs in the Maghrebi Quarter and even for rebuilding the Third Temple.  (Wasserstein, 1991). The result was a riot that left hundreds of Jews and Palestinians dead, what historian Hillel Cohen calls “Year Zero” of the Palestine question.

In the 1940s, the Lehi militia published a manifesto, “Principles for Revival,” calling for “building the Third Temple as a symbol of the Era of the Complete Redemption.” Lehi was a secular but militant strain of Zionism that saw the third Temple as a manifestation of Hebrew religion and culture.

After the Israeli military occupied the Old City of Jerusalem in June 1967, the first order of business for Jewish Jerusalem’s mayor, Teddy Kollek, was to destroy the Maghrebi quarter, some 10,000 square meters of land. That year on June 10, just three days after the occupation of the city, Kollek summoned 15 private contractors to the Western Wall and ordered them to work around the clock until the entire neighborhood was destroyed.

Within a few years, former Irgun member Gershon Salomon founded a new movement known as the Temple Mount Faithful, whose central message was the removal of the mosques from the Temple Mount.

In the 1980s, this laid the foundation for the establishment of the ‘Jewish Underground,’ a group of Israeli settlers who spent years plotting to blow up the Muslim shrines in Jerusalem, including a plot to blow up the al-Aqsa Mosque in January 1984. 25 Israeli men, including an army officer with expertise in explosives, stole sufficient ammunition to carry out the operation, but were arrested before they could execute it.

The militant approach was echoed in the Knesset, where the political party Tehiya also supported the “confiscation of the control over the Temple Mount from the Muslim Waqf’ and its handover to Israeli authorities, as well as the “building of a Jewish place for prayer on the Temple Mount.” The party managed to win 5 out of 120 seats in the late 1980s.

In October 1990, Temple Mount Faithful laid “a cornerstone” for the Third Temple. It was a “recognition that facts on the ground truly matter,” to use Hegseth’s words. Mass riots erupted. Israeli forces shot dead 17 Palestinians and injured 150 without suffering any fatalities. It was a massacre.

While efforts to blow up the mosque were fringe, assertions of control over it went mainstream in September 2000 when ring-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon took a provocative tour around the Haram al-Sharif, asserting Israeli sovereignty.

Protests erupted immediately. In the first 5 days, Israeli police killed 47 Palestinians and wounded 1,885 with only a few Israeli casualties. Many Palestinian children were shot in the head. An Israeli think tank concluded the IDF’s mission at the time was “to teach them a lesson they would never forget."

This led to a period of historic violence: from 2000-2005, Israeli forces killed 3,189 Palestinians and Palestinian militants killed 1,038 Israelis.

By 2003-4, dozens if not hundreds of religious Jews visited the Haram al-Sharif every day. And, over the past two decades, successive Israeli governments have limited Palestinian access to al-Aqsa while normalizing Jewish access to it. 

This change in the status quo has often led to violence. In one case, on 11 August 2019, the Israeli military stormed the al-Aqsa compound, attacking and dispersing the Palestinian men, women and children present with sound bombs and rubber bullets, while also beating civilian worshippers with batons.

In another case, on 7 May, 2021, Israeli forces fired tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets and stun grenades towards Palestinians at al-Aqsa, wounding more than 200. Multiple videos show Israeli forces firing on Palestinians including children inside the Mosque (1, 2, 3). This triggered the May 2021 War in which Israeli forces killed 256 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 2,000, while Hamas killed 17 civilians in Israel and wounded 114.

Meanwhile, Israeli settler groups have been ethnically cleansing Palestinians in and around the Old City of Jerusalem for decades, property after property, house after house, all of which threatens the Palestinian presence at al-Aqsa and ultimately the holy site itself.

In 2022-3, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir made a habit of taking provocative tours around the al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, visiting at least 6 times, while Israeli settlers frequently exerted domination over the site.

All of this set the stage for Oct. 7th, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, naming its operation “al-Aqsa Flood” and citing ongoing threats to the al-Aqsa Mosque as context. If only there were warning signs.

Since Oct. 7th, Ben Gvir has imposed major new restrictions on Muslim prayer at the al-Aqsa Mosque against the recommendation of his own security establishment which concluded such measures were “unnecessary and intentionally antagonistic.” He belongs to the same faction of Israel’s militant right that seeks to empty the country of all its Palestinians, especially from places like Jerusalem, including its holiest of holy sites.

Now, for the first time in history, Israel’s ruling elites and an incoming US administration may be aligned on taking over the mosque. Whatever happens with Hegseth, the arc of the past century has bent towards a hostile if gradual take over of al-Aqsa and its surroundings. Threats on al-Aqsa have been a powder keg of violence for nearly a century. Ya, things could get a lot worse from here.

If you enjoyed this article, check out our online courses for a comprehensive understanding of the history of Palestine and Israel.