Four Israeli Jewish teenagers were detained by police Wednesday for bowing down at the Temple Mount, an act that seen as a prayer and which is prohibited by the Muslim Waqf, the Muslim religious administration that is authorized by Israel to manage the holy site.

A rabbi also visiting the site told Israel National News that the four did not bow down

One of today’s PLO preconditions for negotiation with Israel — they change frequently — is for a release of “all Palestinian prisoners.” For example, the Times of Israel reported today that

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year offered to free 50 Palestinian security prisoners who have been held since before the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, in a bid to get Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to come back to the peace table, The Times of Israel has learned.

However, Abbas rejected the offer.

Today, a senior Palestinian official told The Times of Israel, the Palestinians might agree to renew talks with Israel if Netanyahu releases all 107 of the pre-Oslo veterans still in jail, most of whom have blood on their hands.

The Prime Minister’s Office had no comment on the matter.

It’s important to understand that these demands are more than just an attempt by the PLO to get a concession from Israel without giving anything in return (although it is assuredly that).

Although the Arabs and their supporters will refer to these individuals as ‘political prisoners’, they have by and large been convicted of serious violent crimes, especially including murder. They are not imprisoned simply for their politics.

The demand for the release of prisoners is of great ideological and religious significance. In the PLO’s secular/postcolonialist Palestinian narrative, the Jews have no legitimacy in ‘Palestine,’ and therefore do not have the right to imprison Arabs, the true ‘owners’ of the land. In addition, violent terrorism is the natural right of an ‘oppressed people’ trying to free themselves from colonialists.

From the standpoint of the Islamist Hamas, the actions of the prisoners constitute defensive jihad against Jews usurping land which is an Islamic waqf. Far from being criminals, they are heroes for doing their Allah-commanded duty.

For both groups the release of the prisoners would also humiliate the Jews, who would not be able to revenge themselves on the killers of their relatives (incidentally, this is another reason Israel should implement a death penalty for terrorist murder).

And both see themselves as fighting to reestablish Arab (as well as tribal and family) honor by recovering the possessions ‘stolen’ from them in the nakba of the founding of the Jewish state.

The release of these prisoners, therefore, would be a great victory and encouragement for the Palestinian cause, even if the prisoners themselves are no longer useful in the struggle. Expect a massive celebration when the ‘heroes’ return home.

As often happens, pragmatic Israelis miss the significance of ideology. The report continues:

It is understood that the Israeli security establishment has no objections on security grounds to the release of the 107 pre-Oslo veterans, particularly in light of the release of 1,027 Palestinian security prisoners to Hamas as part of the deal that saw the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in Gaza in October 2011.

We can quibble about this, especially since some of those released in the Shalit deal did return to terrorist activity. But even if this is entirely true, the security aspect is only a small part of the significance of releasing Arabs that have murdered Jews.

The correct approach would be to apply the death penalty to murderers, and to imprison the others — and keep them imprisoned — under humiliating conditions.

If Israel would like to end Arab terrorism, the way to do it is by removing the incentives, not by making it pay.

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The arrest of the Jerusalem Mufti on Tuesday for throwing chairs at Jews on the Temple Mount prompted the Jordanian parliament on Wednesday to demand that King Abdullah expel the Israeli envoy. The legislators also called to start a draft for a law to scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

Police arrested an Arab from entering the Temple Mount, and an enraged Grand Mufti and other Arabs began throwing plastic chairs at five Jews who entered the Temple Mount under police escort. Arab media said they prostrated themselves, an act of prayer that the Waqf prohibits, except for Muslims.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Washington Post the group did not carry out any act of prayer. As usual, Palestinian Authority media exaggerated the entire scene. Arab media always report that Jews “stormed” the Temple Mount. The Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reported that 50, and not five, Jews prostrated themselves.

Israeli police stepped in to end the clash before it could get out of hand and arrested the Mufti, a rare action.

It did not take much time for Jordan to hear of the altercation, and the country’s parliament unanimously agreed that the kingdom should expel the Israeli ambassador and recall its own ambassador from Tel Aviv. The parliament added its own imagination to the facts and claimed that Israel is trying to build a bridge between the Al Aqsa mosque and Jerusalem “settlements.” The parliament also called for drafting legislation to scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

Several hours later, Israel released the Mufti, which probably was not related to the Jordanian parliament’s move. The government knows full well that the Arab world will not sit passive with the Jerusalem Mufti being taken from his home for interrogation.

The U.S. State Department was asked by reporters to comment on the fuss, and assistant spokesman Patrick Ventrell told them, “We urge all sides to respect the status quo of this holy site and to exercise restraint and refrain from provocative actions.

As usual, the State Dept. does not what it is talking about.

Status quo? From when? From 1967?

The Israeli government passed the Protection of Holy Places Law on June 27, 1967.

It states:

“The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places.”

The wise State Dept. does not also know much about the Mufti, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein.

In 2006, he stated that suicide bombings of Israelis were “legitimate, of course, as long as it plays a role in the resistance.”

On the other hand, one could say he simply was maintaining the status quo, which the Oslo Accords and the peace treaty with Jordan changed.

Jordan controlled the Temple Mount until the Six-Day War in 1967. Before then, Amman did not let Jews visit holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It also prohibited Christians from most churches and holy sites in the Old City, Judea and Samaria, except for few and far between visiting foreign dignitaries.

After Jerusalem was restored to Israel in 1967, the Israeli government didn’t want to have much to do with the Temple Mount for many reasons, not the least of which was the concern of a religious war with Muslims as well as the complicated and complex issue in Jewish law of whether it is even permitted for a Jew to ascend to the site of the destroyed First and Second Temples.

The government left authority for the Temple Mount site in the hands of the Muslim Waqf site, with the stipulation that Israeli police could patrol the site and enter the mosque area, if necessary.

The “status quo” ended in 1969, when an Australian evangelical Christian tried to burn down the mosque to hasten the Second Coming, if not World War III.

Muslims began to renovate buildings on the Temple Mount and tried to minimize the presence of Israel soldiers. A plot by a Jewish underground movement to blow up he Al Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock to awaken Jews to a spiritual revival, or alternatively, bring on World War III.

For the past ten years, MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud-Beitenu) has been visiting the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on the 19th of the Hebrew month, every month. But on Sunday, April 28, 2013, Feiglin received a phone call from Deputy Commander Moshe Barkat, Chief of the Israeli Police David Precinct, which includes the Old City of Jerusalem.

“He informed me that, on direct order from the prime minister, I would not be permitted to enter the Mount tomorrow,” MK Feiglin wrote in his Facebook page.

A source close to Feiglin told The Jewish Press that the deputy commander told the MK that the Waqf, the Jordanian charity organization which runs the Temple Mount, warned the Prime Minister’s office that should Feiglin go up on the Mount on Monday, it would “start World War Three.”

No one wants that. Except that the same Waqf has been cautioning about new world wars frequently, and is often involved in organizing, rather than trying to prevent them.

According to Feiglin, the prime minister has no legal authority to give such an order, because it violates three basic laws:

1. Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, which gives each person freedom of movement, and requires the state to protect this right.

2. Basic Law: The Knesset, which grants every MK complete immunity in carrying out his duties.

3. Basic Law: Jerusalem, which says: “The sacred sites shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the religionists to the sites they hold sacred, or their feelings concerning those sites.”

Also: “Any and all authority applying to the area of Jerusalem that is granted by law to the State of Israel or the Jerusalem Municipality, shall not be transferred to a foreign entity, political or governmental, whether permanently or temporarily.”

“The only legal way to prevent me from going up to the Temple Mount tomorrow (without changing existing law),” says MK Feiglin, “is if, in the opinion of the officer in charge of the place there exists an immediate, clear and present danger.”

But, having given him the warning a full day in advance, Feiglin argues, security forces should have ample time—had the prime minister only told them so—to organize and prevent dangerous gathering and violence.

According to MK Feiglin, the Prime Minister’s decision “confirms what I was told by the police command when I asked to tour the Dome of the Rock, that the Temple Mount is under Muslim sovereignty.”

This unfortunate decision, writes Feiglin, can be added to reports this week about transferring broad supervisory authority to UNESCO in Jerusalem, as well as the reality of a de facto construction freeze in Jerusalem, as Housing Minister Uri Ariel warned last week.

The source close to Feiglin says the MK will obey Netanyahu’s directive, but that as of tomorrow Feiglin would no longer be voting the Likud-Beitenu party line.

“When, just before Jerusalem Liberation Day, the Prime Minister orders an Israeli Knesset member that—contrary to Israeli law— he not to go up to the Temple Mount, it means that the Prime Minister has officially and openly revoked Israeli sovereignty on the Mount and given it to the Muslim Waqf,” MK Feiglin wrote.

“This is an entirely new situation, more severe than before, and I must consider now how to force the Prime Minister to respect the sovereignty of the State of Israel in its capital Jerusalem,” he concluded.

Likud Knesset Member Miri Regev announced Wednesday she will visit the Temple Mount to try to understand the problem with Jews praying at the holy site. The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf officially controls the Temple Mount, a power granted to it by the Israeli government shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967.

MK Regev, who chairs the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee in the new government, said, “I don’t understand why a Jew is not allowed to pray in his most sacred place.”

After MK Regev’s announcement, Meretz MK Michal Rozin said the idea of a Knesset Member ascending the holy site is “a perverse attempt and cynical use of religion and political measures.”

She said that an appearance by Regev at the Temple Mount with the intention of clearing the way for Jews to pray there would incite Muslims.

The Waqf forbids Jews from praying on the Temple Mount or even carrying with them a prayer book, religious articles or acting as if they are praying.

The Chief Rabbinate has ruled that Jews are not allowed to ascend the Temple Mount because it still is holy despite the destruction of the First and Second Temples and that no rituals can be performed because it is impossible to be ritually pure today according to guidelines set out in the Torah.

Many national religious rabbis permit ascending to certain areas of the Temple Mount.

A demonstration was held last Wednesday (Dec. 26) at the northern entrance to the Temple Mount, in protest of the Waqf’s continued destruction of archeological artifacts on the holy site. The demonstrators, led by MK Aryeh Eldad, called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene and to stop the obliteration of these priceless antiques by the Waqf.

The Waqf, a Jordanian Muslim religious body entrusted with the management of the Temple Mount, has been renovating the site for years. In the process, they have been moving mounds of earth off the mountain. These piles contain numerous archaeological artifacts from many centuries. In 2004, the High Court of Justice passed a ruling prohibiting the removal of the dirt from the Temple Mount to other locations until the contents are combed for artifacts.

Archaeologist Yitzchak Dvira has recently published a report about the Waqf’s ongoing disregard of the High Court’s ruling. In his report he states that since the ruling in 2004, large piles of earth have accumulated on the eastern side of the Temple Mount, and the Waqf continues to move earth from the Temple Mount to dump sites in East Jerusalem. Dvira has documented several recent incidents of heavy machinery moving earth away from the Temple Mount. These actions have resulted in the loss of artifacts important to understanding the Jewish, Christian and Muslim history of the site.

Dvira and his crew have sifted through the piles of earth removed from the Mount and have recovered many artifacts belonging to various historical periods. They have recovered seals baring the names of priests mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, support beams from the First Temple, remnants of the structure of the Second Temple, arrow heads and horse-shoe nails from the Crusade period and even artifacts from the Muslim period.

Dvira states that he sees dozens such artifacts every day in the mounds on the side of the Temple Mount. He told Tazpit News Agency that he believes the earth piles should be removed, but it should be done in a supervised fashion, ensuring no further losses. Dvira submitted his report to the police who have released a statement declaring that all construction on the Temple Mount is under their close supervision, and that Dvira’s claims are incorrect. As of now, all other supervisory agencies have not provided a response.

Dvira points out that all issues regarding the Temple Mount are overseen by the Prime Minister’s Office, and he suspects that there is consent on their part to the Waqf’s actions. PM Netanyahu met with King Abdullah of Jordan last week, and Dvira believes they discussed issues related to the Temple Mount project. The Jordanians have been pressuring the Israeli Government to allow the removal of the earth mounds on the side of the Temple Mount.

Dvira and the Temple Mount organizations warn that this continued neglect and disregard of the law will bring to further loss of historic relics. They intend to petition the High Court once more soon.

This is one of those issues that ought to be shocking, but about which nothing is done. For years — I’ve written about this before — the Muslim waqf that controls the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying archaeological artifacts of Jewish provenance at the site.

Apparently out of fear of inflaming Muslim sensibilities — and we know how easy that is — the government of Israel, which theoretically has sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, has never done more than file mild protests over the deliberate destruction of Jewish history.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials, including Mahmoud Abbas (like Yasser Arafat before him) actually deny that there was a Jewish Temple on the site, calling it an ‘alleged Temple’! So what do they think their waqfbuddies are smashing up?

But this is only half of it.

Executing their usual maneuver of accusing Israel of doing what in fact they themselves are doing (or trying to do, like genocide), the Palestinians regularly accuse Israel, on the flimsiest of pretexts, of undermining the Al-Aqsa Mosque or otherwise trying to destroy it. There have been countless Friday riots — last week’s was an example— after Arabs are incited by Imams with stories about the ‘imminent danger’ facing the mosque.

Meanwhile Jews are prohibited from praying on the Mount — Jews have been arrested after being seen moving their lips there. The justification for the criminalization of prayer is, of course, that it will anger the Arabs, and therefore is a matter of public safety. As in so many other cases, the Muslim tactic of extorting unreasonable concessions by threatening violence has been successful.

Numerous lives were lost in 1967 in order to reverse the ethnic cleansing of eastern Jerusalem, to rescue synagogues and cemeteries from desecration, and to make it possible for people of all faiths — even Jews! — to visit their holy sites.

Now, as a result of bad decisions, timidity and inaction, Israel is allowing its sovereignty to slip away and the Arabs to destroy the evidence of Jewish history.

Secular Israelis and Jews may think that this does not concern them. They are wrong. These sites — and their history — belong to the Jewish people, and are part of what unites them as a people, regardless of their degree of observance.

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On Friday morning, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Dean of the Petach Tikva Hesder Yeshiva, said on the Kol Israel morning program “Meeting Point” that any argument against Jewish prayer on Temple Mount is unacceptable and he does not understand how no human rights organization has acted to rectify the situation.

“Anyone who doesn’t fight for freedom of worship on Temple Mount – is not a true advocate of human rights,” Cherlow said.

Rabbi Cherlow was among the founders of the Tzohar Foundation, a central Modern Orthodox foundation working to build bridges between the religious and secular in Israel, among other things by offering secular Israelis easier access to religious services than the chief rabbinate provides.

According to Cherlow, we should find a middle ground between the vision of connecting Heaven and Earth and the danger of an erupting World War III, but it “simply cannot be that in the name of security concerns Jewish prayer may be prohibited on Temple Mount.”

Cherlow cautioned that, on the other hand, we must not take irresponsible actions that may ignite a blazing fire, “which will not produce an increase in faith.”

Cherlow said that it is possible that the great concession of Temple Mount began with the late IDF General Motta Gur and his paratroopers, who rushed to the Western Wall through the Temple Mount, “that is, they turned the Temple Mount into a secondary destination, using it as merely a path to the Wall.”

Rabbi Cherlow noted that, some 10 years ago, the producers of a reenactment of that 1967 operation changed the words of Motta Gur from the historically correct “Temple Mount is in our hands,” to the politically correct “Jerusalem is in our hands.”

Former UN ambassador Dore Gold said on the same program that it is unthinkable to leave control over Temple Mount in the hands of the Waqf agency or the Islamic movement, and that Israel’s goal for the coming years should be to open up Temple Mount to members of all religions.

Gould noted that since the 1967 victory, every single Israeli government has faced the situation that followed a move by then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who handed the Waqf the keys to the mountain. He said that situation must be changed now, albeit gradually.

In that context, Gold said in this context that the “price tag” activities weaken Israel’s position in Jerusalem and harm the interests of the State of Israel.