Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovitch (Israel Our Home) visited the Temple Mount this morning (Tuesday), accompanied by Israel Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen and senior police officers. The visit lasted two hours.

Though Muslim Waqf officials were informed of the visit in advance, and even accompanied Aharonovitch, Arab spokesmen were quick to condemn the visit as “provocative” and “inflammatory.”  Arab MK Taleb A-Sana said, “This visit was contemptible and provocative. He is a persona non grata at the Al-Aqsa mosque. His purpose was only to goad the Moslems and show them who’s boss.”

Israel liberated the area – Judaism’s holiest site in the world, home to both Holy Temples – in the Six Day War in 1967. However, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan immediately granted the Muslim religious authority day-to-day control of the site, under the official auspices of the Israel Police. Though then-Chief IDF Rabbi Shlomo Goren recommended that the mosque be blown up, his idea was turned down – and not even a synagogue has been built on the site in the ensuing four-plus decades. 

The Palestinian Authority cited the visit by then-Minister Ariel Sharon in late 2000 to the Temple Mount as the excuse for beginning the Oslo War, in which nearly 1,100 Israelis were murdered through the first half of 2003.

Aharonovitch explained that he came to find out about police activity on the Mount and to discuss current intelligence reports.

Begin in Beit El

At the same time, another government minister – Benny Begin (Likud), one of three ministers without official Cabinet portfolios – was visiting Beit El in southern Shomron, north of Jerusalem. He met with Beit El Mayor Moshe Rosenbaum, who hosted him on the hilltop neighborhood of Pisgat Yaakov (Artis), atop the water tower-turned-lookout point. The mayor explained how the current construction freeze, in place since the Barak government, causes suffering to the residents and their children who want to live near them.

Rosenbaum told his visitor that his father, the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, visited Beit El back in its early days, in the late 1970’s, and participated in the dedication ceremony of Yeshivat Beit El.

“Your father said, ‘This is the greatest day of my life,’” Rosenbaum told Begin, who was visibly moved and promised to study the issues and do what he could to help develop the town of Beit El. Beit El currently has close to 6,000 residents, making it the 13th-largest town in Judea and Samaria.

Mayor Rosenbaum said, “The current decrees against the population of Judea and Samaria cannot continue. Hundreds of people here, as well as in other Yesha communities, voted for the Likud because of its promise to revoke these decrees and to ensure that there would be no Palestinian state. Promises like this cannot be broken.”

“The new American government is taking a tough policy vis-à-vis Israel,” Begin said, “but the government plans to unfreeze construction in Beit El and throughout Judea and Samaria.”

Asked how he foresees Beit El 20 years from now, Begin said, “As it is now, just more flowering and more thriving.”