Netanyahu's Far-Right Coalition Escalates Al-Aqsa Confrontation, Challenging Decades-Old Status Quo

In late July, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the West Bank settler who serves as Israel's minister of security, walked onto the grounds of al-Aqsa mosque compound with more than two thousand Jewish extremists. What happened that day was not new in form—far-right groups have been making these visits for years—but it marked a visible escalation in scale and audacity. The group sang the national anthem. They prayed in the center of the compound. Israeli police, answering to Ben-Gvir himself, erected tents to shade the worshippers. For anyone watching the site's history, these tents were a provocation with symbolic weight. To erect even temporary structures on the compound is to test a boundary that has held, however fragilely, for nearly sixty years.

Al-Haram al-Sharif, as Muslims call it, sits in the southeast corner of Jerusalem's Old City. At its center stands the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam's oldest surviving places of worship, built on the spot where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. At the compound's base runs the Western Wall, a retaining wall from the second Jewish temple destroyed in 70 CE. The site is the holiest place in Judaism. For centuries, access has been managed through intricate compromise. After Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, the arrangement known as the status quo took shape: Jordan would remain custodian of the site; Muslims would have exclusive prayer rights; Jews could visit at designated times but could not pray there. It was a historic bargain, born from the recognition that without careful boundaries, the site would become a detonator.

For three years, Ben-Gvir has been visiting the compound with increasing frequency, each visit eroding the norms that kept the arrangement intact. The groups have grown larger and bolder. Where once there were perhaps twenty settlers, quietly escorted to pray at the far wall, now there are thousands performing rituals openly in the center. Eight Arab nations issued a joint condemnation. Jordan, which administers the site through the Waqf—a foundation now described as defenseless—called an emergency meeting of Arab and Islamic leaders and warned that the incursions constituted a blatant provocation to Muslims worldwide. Jordanian officials have begun speaking of an imminent Israeli takeover as a genuine possibility.

The escalation is not accidental. Netanyahu has publicly backed Jewish prayer at the site, claiming he coordinated the changes with Ben-Gvir. The Israeli police have begun actively recruiting extremist activists to serve in the Temple Mount Unit, the force responsible for policing the compound. According to reporting from Haaretz, the deputy commander of that unit posted a call on social media and in WhatsApp groups associated with West Bank settlers: anyone who wants to take part in implementing sovereignty should contact him. Meanwhile, five staff members of the Waqf were detained by Israel's counterintelligence service in the run-up to Ramadan.

Behind these incursions lies a vision that was once fringe but is now gaining mainstream backing within Israel's government: the construction of a third Jewish temple on the site. Extremists march under flags depicting this temple, a structure that does not exist. Those same flags appear on bulldozers flattening neighborhoods in Gaza. Soldiers wear patches bearing the temple's image. The rise of this movement coincides with a surge in attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, violence so severe that it has prompted urgent intervention calls from within Israel's own establishment. Earlier this year, dozens of Israelis—including two former prime ministers, former heads of security services, and former judges—signed a final warning threatening legal action against their government over its support for what they called Jewish terrorism in the West Bank.

History offers a warning about what happens when the status quo breaks. In 2000, then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the site to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty. The visit sparked a chain of events that helped ignite the second intifada, a conflict that killed thousands. In October 2023, Hamas named its attack on Israel al-Aqsa Flood, claiming it was provoked by Israeli violations at the mosque. That attack killed 1,200 Israelis and triggered the war on Gaza. The site has always been a detonator, sitting in the center of the Old City with strong religious beliefs compressed into a small space. What is happening now is not the work of radicals operating at the margins. It has government approval. With national elections scheduled for October and much of the world's attention still fixed on Gaza—Netanyahu rejected a US-backed fifteen-point peace plan just this past weekend—the Israeli government appears to be racing to expand settlements and accelerate changes on the ground before its mandate expires. The question now is whether the fragile arrangement that has held since 1967 can survive what comes next.