Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Temple Mount Ban Lifted For Israeli Lawmakers

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A ban on all Israeli lawmakers visiting the Temple Mount was lifted.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said in a letter to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein that all lawmakers, including government ministers, will be permitted to visit the Temple Mount once every three months.

The decision comes a week after Likud lawmaker Yehuda Glick, who in 2014 was shot and nearly killed by a Palestinian terrorist over his Temple Mount activism, asked Netanyahu to let Jewish lawmakers resume visiting the Mount. In his request, Glick pointed out that Muslim lawmakers had visited the site during Ramadan, Haaretz reported.

In November 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered lawmakers to stay off the Temple Mount amid a wave of Palestinian terrorism linked to claims that Israel was trying to change the status quo. Israel denied the claims. After Glick filed a petition against the ban, Netanyahu last July decided to allow lawmakers to visit the site on a trial basis.

However, on July 14, 2017, before the decision went into effect, three Arab Israelis shot dead two policemen on the Temple Mount. Israel responded by suspending the plan and installing walk-through metal detectors at the Muslim entrances to the site. Amid prayer sessions, riots and regional pressure, Israel eventually removed the metal detectors. But the ban on visits by lawmakers remained in place.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.