by James M Dorsey
When Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stormed the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif with up to 3,000 of his singing, dancing, and praying ultra-nationalist religious followers, he didn’t just target the site holy to Jews and Muslims.
Mr. Ben Gvir carefully timed his provocation, violating long-standing arrangements with the Jordanian-controlled endowment that administers the Muslim holy sites on the Mount, to fuel regional tensions.
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The arrangements allow non-Muslims to visit the site in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City but ban them from praying there.
With his provocation, Mr. Ben Gvir hoped to sabotage US-Qatar-Egypt-mediated Gaza ceasefire talks scheduled to be held later this week in either Doha or Cairo.
“We must win this war and not go to conferences in Doha or Cairo, but defeat them, bring them to their knees. This is the message. We can defeat Hamas,” Mr. Ben Gvir said as he strolled across the Mount.
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Israeli police enter Al Aqsa Mosque in 2021. Credit: VOA
The holy site has long been an emotive Israeli-Palestinian flashpoint. Hamas codenamed its October 7 attack on Israel that started the Gaza war Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The Haram al-Sharif’s Al-Aqsa Mosque is Islam’s third holiest site.
A series of incidents, including the storming of the mosque compound by Israeli police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades, sparked the 2021 ten-day Gaza war.
Fueling the fire, Mr. Ben Gvir, accompanied by National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf and Amit Halevi, a member of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, emphasized religious aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly regarding the status of Jerusalem.
Mr. Ben Gvir staged his provocation on Tisha B’Av, the day Jews mourn the destruction of their First and Second Temples in 586 BC and 70 AD.
“We are here on Tisha B’Av, at the Temple Mount, to commemorate the destruction of the Holy Temple. As I said—our policy is to allow prayer,” Mr. Ben Gvir, a West Bank settler leader, said.
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Israeli troops confront villages during an earlier raid in January 2024 in At-Tuwani. Credit: B’Tselem
Mr. Ben Gvir hoped that his provocation, coupled with a simultaneous settler assault on the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani in the southern Hebron hills and a controversial settler visit to the tomb of Abraham in Hebron itself, would spark the kind of violence that would either force a cancelation of the ceasefire talks or persuade Iran and/or Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia, to strike at Israel sooner than later.
Iran and Hezbollah have vowed revenge for Israel’s recent killing in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah military commander Fouad Shukr in Beirut. Even so, Iran and its Lebanese ally appear to have been holding back to avoid being seen torpedoing the ceasefire talks. A ceasefire would offer Iran and Hezbollah the fig leaf to refrain from retaliating.
Mr. Ben Gvir’s provocations may serve Mr. Netanyahu’s purpose as he balances international pressure to agree to a ceasefire that could end the ten-month-old war while insisting the war will continue until Israel has destroyed Hamas militarily and politically if they produced the kind of violence that would delay or derail the talks.
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The question is how long Mr. Netanyahu can maintain his ever-more precarious balancing act. His rope to complicate negotiations by making new demands is running thin.
Even so, Mr. Netanyahu took Mr. Ben Gvir to task, insisting that “the setting of policy at the Temple Mount is directly subject to the government and the prime minister,” not the national security minister.
The provocations spotlight Mr. Netanyahu’s political tightrope with Mr. Ben Gvir and equally far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatening to collapse the government if the prime minister agrees to a ceasefire.
They also highlight the increasing influence of ultra-nationalists in branches of government, first and foremost, the military.
The settlers in At-Tuwani and Hebron, like in similar past incidents, were accompanied and protected by Israeli troops. In At-Tuwani, soldiers escorted busses carrying the settlers while military snipers occupied rooftops.
Many of the troops are settlers themselves and/or graduates from militant pre-military religious seminaries or yeshivot hesder.
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Recent US criticism of Messrs. Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who last week described starving Gazans as “moral” and “justified,” should be an indication that the Biden administration will twist Mr. Netanyahu’s arm in the ceasefire talks.
It isn’t. Unintentionally, the administration may have strengthened the ultra-nationalists’ hand by announcing a US$20 billion arms sale to Israel at the very moment the United Nations Security Council, including US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, decried Israel’s recent attack on a Gaza school that left scores dead.
The sale and the US military build-up in the Middle East allows ultra-nationalists to argue that the United States will have Israel’s back no matter what it does, including rejecting a ceasefire that would end the war.
None of this bodes well for the success of the ceasefire talks.
On the contrary, it makes Iranian and Hezbollah retaliatory strikes against Israel more likely, risking the Gaza war escalating into a full-fledged Middle East war – a war that would reverberate far beyond the region’s boundaries.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.