Is Benjamin Netanyahu about to go rogue in Jerusalem? All the signs are there
Is Israel lining up its ducks for another dramatic unilateral action in Jerusalem? The portents are there in the recent Israeli election campaign, a campaign that returned Benjamin Netanyahu to power with a small but even more nationalist coalition majority.
Emboldened by Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to recognise Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, both at the expense of Palestinian claims to a capital in the eastern parts of the city and in contravention of scores of UN resolutions, Netanyahu made campaign promises to annex additional
parts of the Israel-occupied West Bank and ruled out any possibility of concessions to the Palestinians over Jerusalem.
As the election posters are removed, the great concern emerging in Palestinian East Jerusalem is that Netanyahu is politically strong enough, with both a new mandate and an increasingly compliant US administration behind him, to allow him to act with greater impunity with regard to the Christian and Islamic holy sites of the city.
A particular flashpoint is the alAqsa mosque, one of the holiest shrines in the Islamic world, in a large courtyard the size of London’s Green Park known as the Haram al-Sharif. Control over this site has been contentious since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. Despite its victory, Israel recognised the central role of this site in Islam and Palestinian nationalism, and the powerful forces it would provoke if Israel sought to take it over. It allowed a Jordanian-appointed and funded body, the Waqf administration, to continue to manage the site and be responsible for its upkeep. Internal matters such as the conduct of the mass prayers in the courtyard were the responsibility of the Waqf administration, but the security of the perimeter was managed by the Israeli police.
Over the past two decades, however, there has been a resurgence of Israeli religious movements which have sought to force the Israeli government’s hand in eroding the authority of the Waqf administration and Palestinian access to the Haram al-Sharif. They are driven by the increasingly strident claim that the al-Aqsa mosque and other Islamic sites in the Haram alSharif were built upon the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. But they also fear that if negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership were to resume – and succeed – they would necessarily involve Israeli recognition of Palestinian sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif. Consequently, Israeli settler groups have redoubled their efforts to derail the arrangements at the site. These groups constitute a core part of Netanyahu’s base.
Ignoring Judaic religious injunctions, Israeli legislation and JordanianIsraeli agreements not to conduct Jewish prayers on the site, larger and larger numbers of Israeli settlers and religious Jews have been entering the site to pray more and more frequently. Parties of up to 50 Jewish worshippers, accompanied by paramilitary police, have led to altercations with Waqf guards, demonstrations by Palestinian Muslim worshippers, age restrictions on Muslims allowed access to the site, and a breakdown in security cooperation between Waqf officials and the Israeli police.
These spikes in violence are likely to lead to a more significant outbreak of fighting in the near future, and the absence of a restraining US presence is critical. In 2015, when the stand–off between Jewish worshippers attempting to pray on the site and Palestinian Muslims determined to stop them was at its peak, the Jordanian government called on the then US secretary of state, John Kerry to intervene. King Abdullah of Jordan made it clear that if the US was concerned about Isis in Syria, unless it intervened to scale down the provocations on the Haram al-Sharif, he, as custodian of the site recognised by Israel and the Islamic world, would be swept aside and the US would find Isis growing not only in Amman but also in Jerusalem. Under US pressure, Netanyahu blinked, halted the tacit support for the settlers, and a new modus operandi was established.
However, since February this year, a new flashpoint around the Golden Gate – a highly symbolic entrance to the Haram al-Sharif – has led to a series of clashes between Israeli police and Muslim worshippers. Waqf officials and the Jordanian government are well aware that they are on their own, without any US support for the conflict reduction measures that were previously introduced.
Flushed with his electoral victory, and politically tooled-up with US support for his annexationist dreams, Netanyahu has the Islamic sites of Jerusalem in his line of fire. He exhibits all the hallmarks of a politician about to go rogue.
• Mick Dumper, author of Jerusalem Unbound: Geography, History and the Future of the Holy City, is professor of Middle East politics, University of Exeter