Under the pretext of concern for human rights and the protection of minorities, the opponents of the changes in the judicial system are asked to convince that any restriction imposed on the judges will ultimately harm the public and deprive it of a significant tool to obtain what it deserves. However, it turns out that at least as far as the Jewish ambitions on the Temple Mount are concerned, the High Court of Justice has never or almost never sided with the petitioners, except in fringe issues on the fringes.
We examined sixty petitions submitted to the court during the almost 56 years that have passed since the liberation of the mountain. These are only some of the petitions submitted in this matter, but they seem to be a representative sample. Well, 57 of them were rejected or deleted by our judges. Only three of them were accepted in one way or another.
27 of the petitions concerned the ban on entering the mountain, which was imposed on individuals or on Jews in general. Among them: the petition of the Temple Mount Trustees in 1989 which demanded to allow a procession on Jerusalem Day that would enter the Temple Mount through the Gate of the Tribes, a host of petitions by the late Chairman of the Temple Mount Trustees Gershon Salomon – at least eight between 1993 and 2012 – requesting to cancel his prolonged exclusion From there, as well as other petitions of those removed from the mountain to cancel their removal such as that of Yehuda Etzion (end of 2003), Yehuda Glick (2009, 2017), Prof. Hillel Weiss (2017) and Michael and Shlomo Foah (2017).
At least seven petitions asked to open the Temple Mount to Jews in the years 2000-2003 when it was completely closed and another petition of the same type asked to ensure Jewish representation on the Mount alongside the Muslim one during the Corona lockdown.
After almost 56 years of petitions related to the Temple Mount, it can be said that apart from leaving a few piles of dirt, the legal effort ended in complete failure
All of these were rejected or deleted with the exception of one petition that was accepted in a way that actually emptied it of its content. This is a petition of the Temple Mount trustees from 1994 who asked to be allowed to go up to the mount on Tisha B’Av. The petition was accepted, but only for a limited number of Jews, for a limited time, without permission to pray, without flags or loudspeakers and while giving permission to the police to prohibit the ascent to the mountain at the last minute “if information is gathered indicating the existence of imminent and immediate danger”.
Ten of the petitions under review asked to allow Jewish worship of one kind or another on the mountain. From the petition of the “Hogi Leumiim” organization in 1968 to allow Jewish prayer there, through Harlof Cohen who asked in 1976 to order the police to refrain from interfering with him praying there, an identical petition by attorney Haim Stenger in 1981, to the petition of the Moked organization and Rabbi Yuval Sharlo in 2018 who claimed that the police did not have the authority to ban prayer on Mt.
At least four petitions, in 1992, 2007, 2010 and 2012, dealt with the permit to offer a Passover sacrifice on the mountain. A petition by the Temple Mount Trustees in 2007 requested permission to read a scroll of Lamentations at the temple site and a petition by the same organization that year requested permission to light Hanukkah candles in the compound. It is almost needless to say that all these petitions were rejected or deleted.
12 of the sixty petitions dealt with the destruction of antiquities on or near the mountain. Beginning with the petitions of the trustees of the Temple Mount in 1989, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 2000 to stop the Waqf’s work on the construction of an underground mosque in Erves Shlomo, continuing with the petition of this movement in 1993 to stop the Waqf’s extensive construction work at the Dome of the Rock , in the petitions of Aryeh King and the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Antiquities on the Mount to stop Islamic burials in the cemetery adjacent to the eastern wall of the Temple Mount in 2009, and ending with the petitions submitted in 2007 and decided only in 2010 demanding that the Waqf excavations in the Dome of the Rock plaza be stopped for the purpose of laying electrical infrastructure.
Of all these, only one petition was accepted, in 2004, for which an agreement was reached between the state and the committee to prevent the destruction of antiquities on the mountain. After dumping the contents of 400 truckloads of dirt from Shlomo’s stables into landfills around the city, it was then agreed not to allow the Waqf to continue removing individual piles of dirt from the mountain. These remain in the east of the Temple Mount to this very day, a reminder of the destruction.
Another petition that was partially accepted was the one submitted by attorney Baruch Ben-Yosef in 1993, which demanded, among other things, not to allow Arab football games and picnics at the site. In practice, with the exception of a few cases, this decision is not enforced by the police. Ball games and picnics are a daily affair all over the mountain.
Additional petitions submitted over the years were also rejected or deleted. Among other things was the petition of the Lehi man Shabti Ben-Dov back in 1967 “to ensure that the supervision of the entrance to the mountain is in the hands of people whose interest is in maintaining it as a holy place for members of the Israeli religion”, as well as to cancel the payment obligation imposed on those who are not Muslim to enter the site. Another petition is that of Noam Federman in 2001 who demanded to prevent the burial of PLO member Faisal Hosseini in the mountain. He was buried in it anyway.
In 2012, the trustees of the Temple Mount petitioned to publish the state auditor’s full opinion on the supervision of the works on the Mount, which included a sharp criticism of the conduct of the authorities. The report has not been allowed to be published to this day. In 2014, the Temple Mount trustees petitioned for a new bridge to be built above the Mogharabim in place of the temporary wooden bridge that was erected there after the 2004 earthquake. The temporary wooden bridge is still standing in 2023 despite serious safety problems .
In 2016, the Academic Council for National Policy petitioned the Jordanian government to prohibit the placement of cameras on the mountain. In 2017, the Regavim movement and the professors’ circle petitioned to prevent the increase of the endowment as well as the possibility of tracking Jews in the mountain. In 2018, the Israel Independence Estate Fund filed a lawsuit to stop the discrimination against Jews on the Temple Mount and its entrances. In the same year, the leaders of the Otzma Yehudit movement petitioned to remove the metal detectors from the Hillel (Mughrabi) gate designated for Jews as it was removed from the other gates of the mountain, designated for Muslims. But these still stand at the entrance of the Jews. In 2020, the Regavim organization filed two petitions against the Jordanian Waqf’s takeover of the Shaar Harhamim complex and its conversion into a mosque. As of 2023, the mosque there is still active and in the last few days the tensions there are even increasing due to pirated electrical connections that Waqf installed in the complex.
After almost 56 years of petitions related to the Temple Mount, it can be said that apart from leaving a few piles of dirt in its east, the legal effort ended in complete failure.
No substantial petition was able to cross the required threshold and be accepted by the judges – those who knew how to order the state to return the bodies of terrorists, to include the families of enemy martyrs in the events of Remembrance Day, to avoid specific checks of Muslims in Israel or the return of infiltrators to their country. No argument, weighty and Zionist as it may be Be that as it may, did not move their dignity from these stubborn positions.
With the continuation of the public preoccupation with the reform of the judicial system, it is worth mentioning that among the activists of the Temple Mount there are no longer any expectations of this institution.
