Jerusalem – Activists: Jewish Visitation To Temple Mount During Passover Nearly Doubles From 2017

Jerusalem – According to statistics released by Temple Mount activists on Thursday, the number of Jewish visitors to the compound during Passover nearly doubled from last year’s count.

Some 2,593 Jewish worshippers are said to have visited the site during Passover, while 1,373 visited in during Passover of 2017 – a raise of 89%. In a broader perspective, it can be noted that the current figure is almost four times bigger than the number in 2015 when only 650 Jews visited the site.

The Temple Mount compound was open for Jewish visitors only on chol hamoed (days that are not a holiday, or the Sabbath), and on these days, only for four and a half hours.

Another new record was set when 714 Jewish worshippers entered Temple Mount on Wednesday – the highest number of visitors in one day.

The activists have also noted that no arrests were made by police during the holiday. Arrests are common among the worshippers that are forbidden from praying or carrying out any religious activities on the site.

“This indicates the end of a years-long tough policy that posed a fear of a sudden arrest among the visitors,” the statement said. However, 19 visitors were shortly detained after bowing or loudly praying.

This low figure of arrests – in comparison to previous years (four were arrested in 2017 and 40 in 2016) – and the high number of visitors, may point to warming ties between the Israel Police and the Temple Mount activists, complacency on behalf of the police, and the increasing trend in visitation to the site with a concurrent decrease in the stigma in Israeli society of doing so.

Last week, activists conducted a Passover sacrifice demonstration in a national park at the foot of the Temple Mount. The fact that the Israel Police and other authorities – such as the Jerusalem Municipality – approved to religious event so close to the Temple Mount, indicates that it is getting closer to the Israeli consensus.

In the past years, the activists were not allowed to conduct the ceremony there and it was carried out in various locations far from the Temple Mount itself, such as the Old City, Mount Olives and Kiryat Moshe, at the entrance to Jerusalem.

MK Yehudah Glick (Likud), a well-known Temple Mount activist that joined the Knesset in 2016, told The Jerusalem Post that the event that he is glad that the event was held at the foot of the Temple Mount.

“We started here over a decade and a half ago, with just a handful of people – and now we have hundreds of people coming,” he said.

Assaf Fried, a spokesman for the Temple Mount Activists Movement, said he was thrilled with the event, adding that “when 10,000 will attend, we will do it up on the Temple Mount itself.”

Left-wing activists protested against the authorities who allowed the event to take place in such location.

“The official police approval to allow the slaughtering ceremony in the Davidson Center – an official national and religious site – and at the foot of the Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa mosque is outrageous,” said NGO Ir Amim in a statement.

“It indicates an official state sponsoring of an extremists ceremony, and supporting the official intentions of the movements that are organizing it.”