In the tumult surrounding the war in Gaza and Israel, it is easy to forget that Hamas code named its surprise attack “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”
Yet this phrase provides the key for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his new war cabinet to prevent the conflict from engulfing the entire Middle East. By making a single simple statement that would give up nothing, Netanyahu could calm Arab fears and even bolster Israel’s delicate attempts to establish better relations with Saudi Arabia and other nations in the region. It would also undermine Hamas’ claims to speak for the wider Muslim world.
Al-Aqsa is the Arab term for what Jews call the Temple Mount, the sacred acropolis on the east side of Jerusalem’s Old City, fifty miles east of Gaza. A little history is vital to grasp what this hotly contested religious site means to Jews and Muslims alike, and why it is at the heart of today’s terrible violence and bloodshed.
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For Muslims, this is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven on a spiritual journey, returning with instructions on how and how often to pray. The entire 37-acre compound, including the Dome of the Rock shrine and the al-Aqsa prayer hall, is considered one big open-air mosque, the most prominent after those in Mecca and Medina.
For Jews, this is where their ancestors worshipped in a series of temples for a thousand years, until the Romans destroyed the complex in 70 A.D. They currently pray at the Western Wall, which holds up one side of the sacred compound with its massive stones from the time of Herod the Great.
Except for a century when medieval Crusaders turned the iconic Dome of the Rock into a Christian church and placed a cross on its finial, al-Aqsa has been a center of Muslim devotion for 14 centuries. Jews and Christians have long been forbidden from worshiping at the site.
That almost changed in 1967, when Israel troops captured Jerusalem in the Six-Day War. A group of Jewish soldiers climbed the Dome of the Rock and attached an Israeli flag to the finial that sports a Muslim crescent. “The Temple Mount is in our hands,” they joyfully radioed their commander.
Israeli’s defense minister, Moshe Dayan, watched in horror through binoculars with his one eye. He understood what the young soldiers did not. “Do you want to set the Middle East on fire?” he radioed back, ordering the flag removed.
Dayan quickly negotiated an agreement with the local Islamic authorities. Israel would be responsible for the site’s security, but its custodian, Jordan’s king, would continue to oversee maintenance and religious affairs. Muslim worship would continue unimpeded, and tourists could visit, but prayer by those of other faiths would remain prohibited.
Dayan’s ad hoc arrangement, approved by Israel’s government, provided a fragile peace in this unruly city, a “status quo” recognizing that altering where people worship in Jerusalem is an invitation to violence and disaster. It is a lesson that the city’s previous rulers, the Ottomans and the British, learned the hard way.
In the half century since 1967, attempts to meddle with Dayan’s arrangement have courted disaster or spawned violence. In the 1980s, members of a Jewish terrorist cell gathered dynamite to detonate the Dome of the Rock, with the goal of replacing it with a new Jewish temple but were arrested before they could carry out their plan. Efforts in 1990 by an extremist Jewish organization to lay a cornerstone for that new sanctuary led to clashes leaving 17 Palestinians dead and hundreds of Jews and Muslims injured.
The Oslo accords, signed with such optimism 30 years ago last month, ultimately foundered in large part because neither side could agree on how to share the complex and the vast network of caves, cisterns, and columned halls below its surface.
Al-Aqsa has become an important political symbol of autonomy for both Arab Christian and Muslim Palestinians—and “al-Aqsa is in danger” has become a powerful recruiting slogan for Muslim fundamentalists and Palestinian nationalists alike. Rock-throwing youths often battle with Israeli police during religious holidays.
Meanwhile, as Israel has tilted right and grown more religious, an increasing number of Jews demand to pray at Judaism’s holiest site, a stone’s throw from the Western Wall. They argue that denying them this right is tantamount to religious persecution.
This summer, Amit Halevi, a member of Israel’s ruling coalition, declared: “God’s house is everyone’s house.” He called for Israel to partition the compound, forcing Muslims to relinquish the northern area that includes the Dome of the Rock, which he contends is “the place on which the temple stood,” though no one knows the precise locations of the ancient sanctuaries. His justification is simple. “The Temple Mount is ours.” The Palestinian ministry of Jerusalem affairs predictably warned “the implementation of this plan will lead to religious war.”
That war may now have begun.
Israel’s neighbors have long paid lip service to the Palestinian cause, yet in recent years have shown more interest in a détente with Israel. Al-Aqsa, however, is known and loved by many of the world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims, and their political leaders understand its explosive power. Hamas is eager to use both real and imagined threats against this place of pilgrimage to galvanize support for its bloody campaign throughout the Muslim world.
With the stroke of the keyboard or a few comments at a press conference, Netanyahu could upset this cynical strategy. He only needs to affirm Dayan’s 1967 agreement banning non-Muslim prayer on al-Aqsa, while maintaining Israeli control over security. Extremists like Halevi would strongly oppose any such affirmation, but now, amid an expanding war, they are no longer in the driver’s seat.
The opposition leaders who joined a war coalition last week—along with U.S. President Joe Biden and Arab leaders—can demand that the prime minister take a stand to keep the Middle East from descending into years of fruitless conflict.
In the long term, this good-faith act could help provide political and religious cover for Israel’s neighbors to continue to normalize relations with the Jewish state.
It is sobering to recall that the last time Muslims were expelled from al-Aqsa, it sparked a century of war that ended up uniting a fractious Islamic world. By taking any change to today’s status quo off the table, religious extremists on both sides will be served notice. They cannot be allowed to use quarrels over God’s house to bring more ruin and destruction to an area that billions around the world honor as a holy land.
Andrew Lawler is a journalist and author of Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City.
