National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Sunday morning visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, the site's administration said.
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This is Ben-Gvir's second visit to the Temple Mount as a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. It drew condemnation from Palestinians and elsewhere in the Muslim world, including Jordan.
This is "a provocative step that is condemned, and a dangerous and unacceptable escalation," Jordan's Foreign Ministry said.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Ben-Gvir's "incursion at an early hour, like thieves, into the Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyards will not change the reality and will not impose Israeli sovereignty over it."
A Hamas spokesman said Israel would bear the consequences for Ben-Gvir's "savage assault" on the mosque and it called on Palestinians to step up their visits and "stand as a rampart in the face of all attempts to defile it and make it Jewish."
"Happy to go up to the Temple Mount, the most important place for the people of Israel. It should be said that the police are doing a wonderful job here and once again proving who owns the house in Jerusalem. All the threats of Hamas will not help, we are the owners of Jerusalem and the entire land of Israel," Ben-Gvir said, apparently responding to recent threats made by Palestinian terrorist groups on the occasion of Jerusalem Day.
The visit also comes amid a Coalition row over the budget with ultra-Orthodox factions demanding more funds. Ben-Gvir, who is the leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit ("Jewish Power") party, urged the government to "remember our brothers in the Negev and the Galilee," referring to Israelis living in the West Bank settlements.
"In the upcoming budget, we must invest in the Negev and the Galilee. Jerusalem is our soul, the Negev and the Galilee is our soul, we must invest, we must operate there, we must be the owners of both the Negev and the Galilee, and the basis is the budget," Ben-Gvir, who has earlier threatened to leave the coalition unless Netanyahu met his demands, stressed.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
