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“If I could do what I wanted, a synagogue would also be established on the Temple Mount,” Ben Gvir, who has a long record of making inflammatory statements, told Israel’s Army Radio on Monday morning.
This is while al-Aqsa Mosque — the third-holiest site in Islam — is forbidden to non-Muslim prayers and rituals based on decades-long international agreements.
Israeli regime aims to Judaize al-Aqsa: Hamas
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has warned that the statement further proves the occupation regime’s intention to Judaize al-Aqsa Mosque.
“What was revealed by the terrorist minister Ben Gvir this morning represents a dangerous declaration that reflects the true intentions of the occupation regime towards Al-Aqsa and its Arab and Islamic identity, as well as its criminal steps aimed at Judaizing it and tightening control over it,” Hamas said in a Monday statement.
The regime has given a free hand to its extremist ministers to implement their malicious plans in the occupied al-Quds, it said, calling on Palestinian youth to mobilize at the al-Aqsa compound to maintain a presence in its courtyards and to confront the plans of the occupying regime.
“We also call on our valiant resistance and our revolutionary youth in the occupied West Bank to escalate their clashes with the criminal enemy and its settler herds,” the statement read.
Regime seeks to spark ‘religious war’: Palestinian Authority
“The Palestinian people will not accept any harm to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is a red line that cannot be crossed under any circumstances,” Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement carried by the official news agency Wafa.
“These calls to alter the status of the Al-Aqsa Mosque are attempts to drag the region into a religious war that will burn all,” he added.
Abu Rudeineh urged the international community, especially the US, to immediately intervene “to restrain the Israeli extreme right-wing government and compel it to adhere to the prevailing legal and historical status of the holy site.”
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry warned of grave consequences from Ben-Gvir’s call, saying, “This is an explicit and public call to demolish Al-Aqsa and build the alleged temple in its place.”
It held the Israeli government fully responsible for the consequences of Ben-Gvir’s incitement, that would push the region into a spiral of violence that is difficult to control.
Al-Aqsa will always remain a Muslim site: Al-Azhar
Al-Azhar strongly slammed the hawkish minister’s statements, adding that these provocative statements are issued only by persons with an extremist mentality that does not respect religions, the sanctities of others, or international laws and conventions, and that knows only the law of the jungle, brutality, and criminality.
The blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, with its courtyards, precincts, and all its areas, has been and shall always be purely Islamic and a historical right for Muslims, Al-Azhar said, adding that the mosque is Islamic in origin, and it is the first of the two Qiblahs and the third of the two Holy Mosques. “It will remain as such despite the criminal Zionist plans to Judaize the historical landmarks of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the city of al-Quds.”
It further urged the Muslim world to take serious and strict positions against these irresponsible and repeated statements by this Zionist official and other extremists who have become accustomed to storming the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and inciting violence and terrorism against innocent Palestinians.
UN slams the provocative statement
UN spokesman Stephen Dujarric told reporters at a news conference that such statements have a negative impact and risk escalating a situation that is already very tense.
Emphasizing the sensitivity of the holy places in al-Quds, Dujarric said that agreement reached by the parties must be respected by all.
He called for adherence to the past agreement as well as public and prevent making statements that further escalate tensions.
Other Muslim states, including Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, have also slammed Ben Gvir’s statement in strongest terms.