MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) has requested an urgent meeting of the Interior Committee on the matter of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. Hotovely explained that police decided on their own to institute harsher limits on Jewish prayer, following visits to the Temple Mount by MKs and other public figures.
Hotovely also expressed concern that Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, the founder of the Temple Institute, was barred from the holy site indefinitely. “This is a fatal blow to freedom of worship, and has no place in the state of Israel,” she said. Rabbi Ariel was also amongst the group of paratroopers that helped liberate the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in the 1967 Six Day War.