ISRAEL FAR-RIGHT MINISTER BEN-GVIR ENTERS AL-AQSA IN ‘PROVOCATION’

Tue 03 January 2023:

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, provoking criticism from Palestinians who called the move a “unprecedented provocation.”

On Tuesday, Ben-Gvir was spotted visiting the location while being heavily guarded.

“Our government will not surrender to the threats of Hamas,” Ben-Gvir said in a statement published by his spokesman, after the Palestinian group that governs the besieged Gaza Strip warned such a move was a “red line”.

Ben-Gvir has long called for greater Jewish access to the holy site, which is viewed by Palestinians as provocative and as a potential precursor to Israel taking complete control over the compound. Leading rabbis forbid Jews from praying on the site.

Ben-Gvir wrote on Twitter after his visit that the site “is open to all and if Hamas thinks that if it threatens me it will deter me, they should understand that times have changed.”

ממשלת ישראל שאני חבר בה לא תיכנע לארגון מרצחים שפל. הר הבית פתוח לכולם ואם החמאס חושב שאם הוא יאיים עליי זה ירתיע אותי, שיבינו שהשתנו הזמנים. יש ממשלה בירושלים! pic.twitter.com/vgDYBYacJG

— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) January 3, 2023

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said it “strongly condemns the storming of Al-Aqsa mosque by the extremist minister Ben-Gvir and views it as unprecedented provocation and a dangerous escalation of the conflict.”

Israel’s opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid had warned that such a visit by Ben-Gvir would spark violence.

Ben-Gvir was sworn in last week as part of a new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu that includes far-right and religious parties.

At the compound, Islam’s third holiest site after Mecca and Medina, only Muslim worship is allowed under the status quo. The Israeli far-right has been attempting to change this and allow Jewish prayer at the site, despite opposition from many ultra-Orthodox Jews and prohibition from leading rabbis.

Palestinians fear that this may lead to a change to the status quo, as far-right Israelis have been calling to build a Jewish temple on the site over the remains of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Israel far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir enters
Al-Aqsa compound in occupied Jerusalem,
amid tight security measures.#AlAqsa pic.twitter.com/indpYCbIB8

— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) January 3, 2023

Israeli media has reported that Netanyahu had been negotiating with Ben-Gvir after it emerged that he was planning to enter the site.

Ben-Gvir holds far-right views on the Palestinians and has called for their displacement. He has repeatedly joined Israeli settlers in storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. He also caused a wave of escalation in the occupied city after setting up an office in February in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, where Palestinians face mass expulsion.

A settler in Kiryat Araba, one of the most radical settlements in the occupied West Bank (illegal under international law), Ben-Gvir has been convicted of incitement to racism, destroying property, possessing a “terror” organisation’s propaganda material and supporting a “terror” organisation – Meir Kahane’s outlawed Kach group, which he joined when he was 16.

Ben-Gvir was also notorious for displaying on his wall a picture of Baruch Goldstein, the American Israeli who massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994.

Last November, Israeli President Isaac Herzog warned in a leaked audio that “the whole world is worried” about Ben-Gvir’s views.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

TWITTER (CLICK HERE)
https://twitter.com/IpIndependent