Teens arrested for placing posters to bar Muslims from Temple Mount on Passover
Returning to the Mount activists hope to carry out sacrifice in compound on Friday afternoon
Police arrested three girls aged 14-16 on Tuesday who are suspected of placing signs in Arabic in Jerusalem’s Old City that were intended to tell Muslims to stay away from the Temple Mount on Friday, so Jews could carry out the Passover sacrifice.
The signs that were hung in the alleyways leading to the Temple Mount read: “To all Muslim residents of Jerusalem... We, representatives of the Jewish people, are asking you to leave the Temple Mount before March 30, 2018, by 6 a.m., so we could carry out the Jewish commandment of the Passover sacrifice. We thank you for your cooperation with us, the Jewish people.”
The three minors were brought for interrogation to the David sub-district police station.
The police said in a statement following the incident that it is acting throughout the Old City and the Temple Mount “in order to keep the public order and to keep the situation balanced for the sake of all residents and religions, so the freedom of religion is maintained.
“Police will act with determination and without rest against every person who would try to disturb the local order,” the statement added.
The Returning to the Mount movement, which initiated the signs operation, said it “will do everything that in our power in order to renew [the ability to carry out] the mitzva of the Passover sacrifice, and we are obligated to ask the Muslims to peacefully to evacuate the [Temple] Mount, in order to allow the Jewish people to carry out the sacrifice.”
The statement added that even if the Muslims would not meet their request, they will “arrive on Friday to fulfill their right and duty in the holy place.”
On Monday, hundreds of activists and supporters attended a Passover sacrifice demonstration at the Jerusalem Archeological Park – Davidson Center, at the southern foot of the Temple Mount.
The fact that the police and the other authorities allowed such event to take place closer to the Temple Mount than in previous years might indicate warming ties between them and the activists.
Assaf Fried, a spokesman for the Temple Mount movements, told The Jerusalem Post that “when we will be 10,000, it will be on the Temple Mount itself.”