JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday there was no change in prayer arrangements at a flashpoint holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City, after a far-right minister in his ruling coalition had stated there was a policy shift.
The compound, in the walled Old City, houses the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest shrine, and is also revered in Judaism as the Temple Mount, a vestige of two ancient temples.
The site is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Under a decades-old “status quo” arrangement with Muslim authorities, Israel allows Jews to visit on condition they refrain from religious rites.
“Israel’s policy of maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed and will not change,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
Netanyahu is currently in Washington, where he will address Congress. Any change in Israeli policy at the site would likely stoke political friction.
Earlier in the day, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that Israel’s political echelon, of which he is a member, “allows Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount”.
Ben-Gvir heads a far-right party and opposes Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu has frequently overruled hardline policy ideas raised by Ben-Gvir, who has also been left out of the narrow decision-making forums during the war against Hamas in Gaza.
(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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