Is the Temple Mount in Israel’s hands? If the nationalist Knesset members don’t provide the answer, the Arab MKs will do so in their place.

Who is the sovereign on the Temple Mount? Official Israeli claims, of course, are that it is the sovereign. But in practice, the sovereignty is being transferred to Jordan – both on the ground and by ignoring international treaties that are being signed behind Israel’s back.

According to the Jordanian foreign minister, “An agreement was signed last year between King Abdullah and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas]. The agreement endorses the historic, existing situation regarding the Hashemite control of the holy places.” He added that Jordan’s control over the Mount enjoys an international consensus. “The entire world and all the religions accept the existing reality,” he said. (Translated from the Hebrew in a February 19 NRG article.)

When I found out that an agreement had been signed to transfer the Temple Mount from the Palestinian Authority to Jordan, I asked Prime Minister Netanyahu how it could be that Israel was not reacting? Would you also be quiet, I asked him, if a second party would sell your house to a third party? After all, it is clear that Israel’s silence in the face of this agreement, publicized throughout the world, is really its tacit approval.

Replying on behalf of the Israeli government, Agriculture Minister Yair Shamir said the following: “Israel is the sovereign in Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount. It administers the most holy place for Jews while considering the fact that the site is holy for Muslims as well, and on the basis of its commitment in the peace agreement with Jordan, in which it was stipulated that ‘Israel respects the special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the places holy to Muslims in Jerusalem.’ Nothing less than that, but also nothing more. It has nothing to do with the agreement signed between Jordan and the PA – an agreement that does not bind Israel. That is all.”

Here’s my answer to Yair Shamir: “I did not receive an answer to my third question: What about Israel? I presume that if I would sell the honorable minister’s home to his neighbor, the honorable minister would oppose the move. We did not hear any voice of opposition from the Israeli government or from the prime minister of Israel over the fact that the Palestinian Authority decided to transfer the sovereignty on the Temple Mount to Jordan. Does the honorable minister, in the name of the government of Israel, say clearly now from the podium of the Knesset of Israel that the government of Israel sees itself as sovereign on the Mount and any agreement transferring the sovereignty from a second party to a third party is null and void? Am I correct, honorable minister?”

I did not receive a clear answer. That is why it is so important for the Knesset’s Jewish members to have its say on the issue of sovereignty over the Temple Mount. Jordanian pressure is taking its toll, presumably translated into pressure that ends up being exerted upon the nationalist Knesset members. If, God forbid, the Jewish MKs do not have their say, the Arab MKs will be able to pass any legislative measure they wish – with all the implications of that eventuality.

Forty-seven years after our paratroopers liberated the Mount with their blood and shouted “The Temple Mount is in our hands,” the question arises: Will our Jewish MKs have the courage to repeat that sentence in the Knesset?
This article originally appeared in Hebrew in Makor Rishon.

The Lower House of the Jordanian parliament voted Wednesday to expel the Israeli ambassador from the country as a protest to the Knesset’s having the audacity to debate the status of the Temple Mount.

In addition, 47 of the 150 legislators in the House signed a resolution that the peace treaty with Israel should be torn up and thrown away.

“The motion came in response to Israel’s actions in Jerusalem and to the Knesset debate of a law that seeks to impose Israel’s sovereignty over al-Aqsa,” the Al-Rai newspaper quoted MPs as saying in the motion.

“Israel’s actions clearly violate the peace treaty… it is aggression against Jordanian custodianship,” the motion said.

Certainly, if Israel violates the peace treaty, harsh action is warrant. Flagrantly inciting rage by even discussing the idea of a Jew praying on the Temple Mount, home of the Al Aqsa mosque, is hard evidence for condemning Israel from the depths of the Quran.

So let’s take a look at the peace treaty that Israel has so disgustingly violated.

The reference to the Temple Mount is implied in Article 9, entitled “Places of Historical and Religious Significance and Interfaith Relations.

The first clause states, “Each Party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.” That kind of puts a giant hole in the Jordanian legislators claim that Israel has violated the peace treaty. Of course, they could always fall back on the Arab world’s fattest lie that has made the imams look even more ridiculous – that the Jewish Holy Temples never existed, that the Bible is a Zionist work of fiction and that the Western Wall’s only religious significance is that Mohammed hitched has horse there, without even paying for the parking spot.

The next clause states, “In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”

So far, the term “permanent status” can be ascribed only to peace talks. They have become such a fixture for diplomats and  journalists that they are going to be sorry if  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ever gives up. He probably won’t, because then he would not have anything to keep him busy. Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, China – they are small potatoes for him. He can wrap up those problems in a day or two.

Clause number 3 states, “The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.”

Lovely.

The Jordanian parliament thinks that the Knesset debate, initiated by Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin, should not be about freedom of religious worship. It thinks that “working towards…peace” means expelling the Israeli ambassador. One third of them think peace means breaking the peace treaty, and all of this because the Knesset talked about Jews praying on the Temple Mount.

The truth is that Jews prayed on the Temple Mount way back when, not only 2,000 years ago but also 45 years ago. No one said “boo” because the Arabs and Jews were at peace. The Arabs had been freed from the rule of Jordan, an occupation that never was authorized by the United Nations. They were neglected as second-class citizens, and Arab villages in Judea and Samaria were left to eat the crumbs that Amman left behind.

After the Six-Day War, The Arabs – pardon the expression – never had it so good. Israel opened up all holy sites to all religions, Israelis traveled and shopped freely in Judea and Samaria, and tourism flourished.

Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin may have single-handedly ditched  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework on Tuesday by brining to the Knesset floor a debate on the prohibition against  Jews praying on the Temple Mount.

In advance of the historic debate, the first time the issue ever has been discussed on the floor of the legislature, Arabs rioted and threw rocks at police, who dispersed them with stun grenades and tear gas and arrested three rioters. The violence forced the closure of the Temple Mount to Jews and tourists. Score one for the Muslims.

In Jordan, opposition leaders called on the monarchy to tear up the peace treaty with Israel.

The Temple Mount is the most untalked about core issue in the so-called negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The “status of Jerusalem” is a known basic issue, but there is simply nothing for negotiators on both sides to talk about when it comes to the Temple Mount.

It evokes more emotions than all other issues combined. The Oslo War, popularly called the Second Intifada, erupted after Ariel Sharon ascended the Temple Mount in his campaign for Prime Minister  in 2000. The violence was due to happen in any event given the refusal of Yasser Arafat to accept then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer for almost all of Judea and Samaria and most of the areas of Jerusalem that had been occupied by Jordan between 1949 and the Six-Day War in 1967.

Arab riots on the Temple Mount have become more regular as the “peace process” comes closer to another death, following the death of the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap, among other snake oil remedies..

The more Muslim clerics and Arab leaders claim that the Jewish Holy Temple never existed and that the Jews have no connection with the site, the more they are arming  themselves with hate and lies that spell “war.”

All it takes is MK Feiglin to set them off, and if Tuesday’s debate is his only accomplishment  in the current Knesset session, it will be far greater than almost all combined  acts of his 119 colleagues

Israel conveniently washed its hands of responsibility for the Temple Mount after the 1967 war and gave Jordan the right to be custodian through the Islamic Waqf.

Buoyed by the Chief Rabbinate prohibition of Jews praying or even ascending the Temple Mount because of several issues relating to Jewish law on the ruins of the Holy Temple, the Arab world tightened its enforcement against Jews trying to do so.

Many national religious rabbis allow Jews to walk on certain parts of the Temple Mount, and MK Feiglin has been doing so for years. He was barred from the Temple the past year until earlier this month, when he resumed his monthly habit of immersing in the Mikveh and visiting the holy site.

Prayers, of course are forbidden, lest Allah be upset over hearing the Shema Yisrael prayer. No prayer books are allowed, and police remove anyone who starts moving his lips. The Supreme Court has questioned the discrimination but has not issued any direct order that allows Jews to pray at the site.

Feiglin brought the issue to the Knesset after having easily secured the required signatures of 30 Knesset Members to debate the issue.

Tuesday’s discussion, was a debate and nothing more and nothing less, but it was more than enough for the Arab to press the riot button.

Arab MKs in boycotted the discussion, which may have been their best strategy since anything they say makes them look even dumber than they are.

The Arab paranoia of Jews ascending the Temple Mount stems from the same attitude that prompted Jordan to ban Jews from all holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria until the War in 1967.

A Jordanian man named Yitzchak Rabin has won his 16-year-old battle to join the Israel Defense Forces.

Yitzhak Rabin Namsy, 18, earlier this week was granted Israeli citizenship and is eligible to enlist in the Israeli army.

The boy was named by his Jordanian parents in honor of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994 and was assassinated in 1995. But the family suffered harassment in Jordan due to the name and were forced to flee to Israel, where they continue to live in exile.

Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar personally traveled to Eilat to present the 18-year-old with his Israeli identification card, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

The Nobel Energy consortium developing Israel’s offshore “Tamar” natural gas fields has signed a half a billion dollar deal to export gas over the next 15 years to Jordan’s Arab Potash Co. and Jordan Bromine Co.

The exports could grow to $30 billion over a longer period of time.

Nobel and its Israeli partners Delek, Isramco and Alon Natural Gas. Will build a pipeline from the Dead Sea Works to the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Diplomacy at the State Department Amos Hochstein has held more than a dozen meetings with Jordanian and Israeli businessmen and political leaders over the past 18 months to help negotiate the Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were involved.

Jordan is increasingly dependent on Israel, which already supplies the kingdom with water, and the significance of Israel’s recent oil and gas discoveries has been under-exaggerated, both economically and financially.

The consortium operating the Tamar gas field previously have signed a 20-year contract to sell $1.2 billion worth of natural gas to the Palestinian Authority.

The purchases by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority come at the expense of Egypt, which has been a totally unreliable supplier thanks to terrorists who frequently blow up the pipeline that brings gas from El Arish to Israel and Jordan.

The deal with Jordan “will pave the way for additional export projects which could enhance regional cooperation as well as provide additional supply to the domestic market and enhanced security of supply through development of additional reservoirs and infrastructure,” said Noble Energy VP Eastern Mediterranean Lawson Freeman.

The new natural gas industry in Israel is creating thousands of jobs for laborers and engineers and also has helped turned the shekel into one of the world’s strongest currencies against the dollar.

Politically, Israel’s energy sources and water resources , thanks to desalinization plants, are creating conditions that will make the Palestinian Authority and Jordan a lot less belligerent while leaving Egypt to wallow in its own economic and political anarchy that was hastened by the Arab Spring revolutions.

Israel may try to assume more control over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, Minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett and told leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in the capital on Monday.

He said his office has taken steps to exercise greater Israeli sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem, Haaretz reported.

Among the steps, he said, is providing better services to the Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem.

In addressing the issue of the Temple Mount, Bennett reportedly said, “Unfortunately, the Temple Mount today doesn’t allow for the full exercise of freedom of religion, and there is discrimination against Jews there. But we have to be very careful when dealing with the Temple Mount because of the huge sensitivity of the site.”

The Temple Mount is under the control of the Islamic Wakf.

Bennett’s speech came a day after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told a group of visiting Israeli students that he would not be willing to share sovereignty over the Temple Mount but would allow Jews to worship at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites.

On Sunday, lawmakers in Jordan threatened to shut down the country’s embassy in Tel Aviv and expel Israel’s ambassador to Amman if Israeli lawmakers drafted a law to end the Wakf’s authority over Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem, calling it a breach of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty.

A Knesset plenum debate on “the loss of Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount” is scheduled for Tuesday.

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Minister of Economy and the head of the Jewish Home party, told a party meeting Monday that the claim that a two-state solution will benefit both the Palestinian Authority and Israel is a lie.

He labeled the “economic” track as another excuse to divide Israel. One of  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s selling points is a  $4 billion package of goodies for his dream of a Palestinian Authority state alongside an Israel that would be less than half its size since the Six-Day War in 1967.

“A Palestinian state would destroy Israel’s economy,” Bennett said in an unusually aggressive speech that reflects his certainty that Kerry’s peace talk venture is headed to the same destination as its source – the cemetery where the peace process was buried more than three years ago.

Bennett pulled out a map of the “New Israel,” as originally proposed by the Saudi Initiative of 2002 and since adopted in principle by the United Nations and the United States..

“How will Israel’s economy look if a rocket will fall in …central Herzliya? [or] a missile brings down a plane at Ben Gurion Airport?” he asked.

He said that the peace talk promoters are using the economy like they once used “peace” and “demographics” as excuses to divide Jerusalem and separate Judea and Samaria from Israel.

Bennett is sounding more and more assured recently, and his sharp political antenna sense what foreign media and Israel’s anti-Netanyahu media refuse to acknowledge – that Kerry is headed for a crash landing.

He has made the same mistake as every wannabe peacemaker before him – George Mitchell, David Hale, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and a host of others who will not be credited even in footnotes when historians look back ask what on Earth the United States was thinking when it thought it could change the Middle East into an extension of Foggy Bottom.

The funny thing it, and it really is sad, is that none of the Western do-gooders looked at the economies of Judea, Gaza and Samaria before and after 1967.

Egypt treated Arabs in Gaza as if they were on the moon, while Jordan at least acknowledged that Arabs in Judea and Samaria were on the same planet, but nothing more.

Growth was stagnant. Education was poor. Infrastructure remained undeveloped. Thanks to the Jordanian prohibition of Christians and Jews from visiting holy sites, tourism was miserable.

All of that changed in 1967. After the war, the Arabs in Judea, Gaza and Samaria were freed from the yoke of their Arab rulers. The entire region blossomed. Israelis flocked to the “occupied” territories to buy cheaper goods and produce.

Israel opened up all holy sites to all religions. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs, not yet called Palestinians, worked in Israel.

Yasser Arafat, born in Egypt, changed all of that.

Bennett should have brought out the graphs of the economy before and after Arafat to show how the Intifada destroyed the Palestinian Authority economy.

The next illogical step, as Bennett warned Monday, is to destroy the Israeli economy.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew to Jordan Thursday morning for secret talks with Jordanian King Abdullah “on developments related to Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations under the auspices of the United State,” the kingdom’s official Petra News Agency reported.

The key part of the two-paragraph statement was its last seven words in the following sentence:

“The King’s meeting with the Israeli leader comes after his latest separate meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry…to achieve tangible progress that meets the aspirations of the Palestinian people protecting at the same time Jordan’s interests.“

“Protecting Jordan’s interests” is something that is overlooked in the giant media microscope that is focused on Jerusalem and Ramallah.

There are an estimate 2.5-3 million Palestinians in Jordan, out of a total population of barely 7 million. Making up nearly 50 percent of the country, the Palestinians are a big time bomb but also are a critical part of the country’s work force.

Even more than Israel, Jordan is better off with a powerless and useless Palestinian Authority.

Jordan has a healthy trade with Israel. Giving the Jordan Valley to Mahmoud Abbas, God forbid, could be catastrophic for Amman, politically, economically and militarily.

The king prefers Israeli forces on the border than a Palestinian Authority army standing on the banks of the Jordan River.

If King Abdullah were totally belligerent to Israel’s needs, Prime Minister Netanyahu would not have wasted time bringing up Israel’s Biblical ties with Beit El in Samaria.

Army Radio reported that the Prime Minister reminded the king that the Biblical Yaakov built an altar there after dreaming that angels were descending and descending from a ladder from heaven.

Beit El happens just happens to be located a stone’s throw, pardon the expression, from Ramallah, and the last thing  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry needs is the idea that Israel maintain a Jewish presence next door to Abbas’ offices.

Since Netanyahu reportedly brought out the Bible, he should have opened the New Testament so that King Abdullah could see for himself that despite Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon comments about Kerry, it is not written anywhere, not even in hidden clues, that Kerry is the Messiah.

There is no doubt that King Abdullah agrees.