JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir prayed at the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on Wednesday and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue “complete victory” over Hamas in Gaza.
In a video on the edge of one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East, Ben-Gvir said that two years after the October 7 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war, Israel was “winning” at the Jerusalem compound known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
A second video showed him praying at the compound, in a fresh challenge to a decades-old understanding which allows only Muslim worship at the site.
“Every house in Gaza has a picture of the Temple Mount, and today, two years later, we are winning on the Temple Mount. We are the owners of the Temple Mount,” Ben-Gvir said in the video released by his Jewish Power party.
“I only pray that our prime minister will allow a complete victory in Gaza as well – to destroy Hamas, with God’s help we will return the hostages, and we will win a complete victory,” Ben-Gvir said.
His remarks were released as Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas are deep in indirect negotiations in Egypt to release all remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza and end the war there.
Ben-Gvir, known as a hardliner well before he helped Netanyahu form the most right-wing coalition government in Israel’s history, heads the pro-settler, nationalist-religious Jewish Power party. He has previously threatened to quit Netanyahu’s government unless Hamas is utterly destroyed.
The Al-Aqsa compound, in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, is Islam’s third holiest site and the most sacred in Judaism. Under a delicate decades-old “status quo” arrangement with Muslim authorities, the Al-Aqsa compound is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and Jews can visit but may not pray there.
Ben-Gvir has previously challenged those rules. His prayer there in August on Tisha B’av, the fast day mourning the destruction of two ancient Jewish temples, which stood at the site centuries ago, prompted Netanyahu to issue a statement saying Israel was committed to the status quo there.
Suggestions that Israel would alter rules at the Al-Aqsa compound have sparked outrage in the Muslim world and ignited violence in the past.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell, Editing by William Maclean)
