The pomp and circumstance that surrounded Monday’s “historic” flight of Israeli and American officials from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi was a sight to behold. Two weeks ago, on August 13, U.S. President Trump, Emirati Prince bin Zayed, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that they had reached an agreement to normalize relations between the UAE and Israel. Since the details of the accord have yet to be fully concluded, the trilateral joint statement announcing this seminal event was, unsurprisingly, short on detail and long on florid rhetoric.
However, hidden among the officials’ lofty language is a carefully worded exception, which reads: “As set forth in the Vision for Peace, all Muslims who come in peace may visit and pray at Al Aqsa Mosque, and Jerusalem’s other holy sites should remain open for peaceful worshippers of all faiths.” While this may appear to be an uncontroversial statement, the wording in fact has profound, and potentially dangerous, implications.
The line relates to the volcanic core of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over Jerusalem, and in which the Arab and Muslim worlds are stakeholders: the so-called “status quo” surrounding the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. This status quo emerged in the wake of the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the Old City of Jerusalem, and with it took control of the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, two of Islam’s holiest sites.
While there is no universally accepted definition of the status quo, one of its pillars was best articulated in a formal declaration made by Netanyahu in 2015, expressing the position of every Israeli prime minister since 1967: “Israel will continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount.” No statement by Netanyahu since then has deviated from that declaration.
Read more from source - https://www.972mag.com/temple-mount-jerusalem-uae-israel
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