Itamar Ben-Gvir joins mass visit to al-Aqsa compound

Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir joined thousands of Jewish visitors at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound on Thursday, according to The Guardian, with police escorting the group as some prayed, waved Israeli flags and sang the national anthem. The Islamic Waqf Department said 3,228 Israelis entered the compound during the morning period, with more expected later in the day. The visit coincided with Tisha B’Av, a Jewish fast day commemorating the destruction of two temples associated with the site.

The compound, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount, is governed by a decades-old status quo that allows non-Muslim visits but bans non-Muslim prayer. The Guardian reports that Ben-Gvir has repeatedly tested that arrangement through high-profile visits and rule changes that have made Jewish prayer and religious materials more visible on site. He has framed the shift as a matter of sovereignty, posting that there was “enormous progress” and that Jews praying there “feel like the owners.”

The practical effect is to turn one of the most symbolically charged pieces of land in the region into a recurring stage for domestic Israeli politics, with the costs borne elsewhere. Each visible change at the compound forces Jordan, which has a custodial role over Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, to respond diplomatically while having limited leverage over Israeli policing on the ground. The Jordanian foreign ministry condemned Thursday’s storming and urged international pressure on Israel, a familiar pattern in which statements substitute for enforcement.

The status quo is not an abstract protocol; it is a risk-management tool built from the memory of earlier escalations. The Guardian notes that Ariel Sharon’s 2000 visit helped ignite the second intifada, and that Hamas later used alleged violations at al-Aqsa as part of the stated rationale for its October 2023 attack, which it called the “al-Aqsa flood.” When senior officials treat the site as an arena for demonstrating control, it compresses the distance between symbolic gestures and street-level confrontation, especially as Gaza remains in a cycle of ceasefires and strikes and the wider region is already strained by the US–Iran conflict.

Inside Israel, the episode also blurs the line between state authority and activist provocation. The Guardian reports that Ben-Gvir installed an ideological ally as head of Jerusalem’s police earlier this year, and that Likud lawmaker Amit Halevi joined a group raising flags and singing at the compound. When the same institutions that are meant to enforce the rules are also used to renegotiate them in public, the remaining constraint is not law but the willingness of other actors to absorb the next round of fallout.

On Thursday morning, the Waqf’s count of entrants provided the day’s hard number. The rest—what the status quo now means in practice—was left to be inferred from who was allowed to pray, and who was there to guard them.