The joint declaration by the US, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates fails to mention one of the Trump peace plan's most important declarations for Israel – the article about the Temple Mount, which Prime Minister Netanyahu's staff co-wrote with the Americans.
That clause marked the first time that the US, in contrast to its previous policy, left the door open for Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, the Jewish people's holiest site and only the third-holiest site in Islam.
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The Temple Mount clause was of enormous importance, since the "status quo" that Moshe Dayan established for the Mount, to which Israel's governments throughout the years have clung, allows Jews to visit the Mount, but forbids them to pray there.
In the "deal of the century," the Americans state that the holy sites of Jerusalem must remain open and available to worshippers and tourists of all religions, and that people of every faith must be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in a manner that honors their religion.
On the other hand, last week's joint declaration does mention the Temple Mount, but all that it says is that Muslims will be allowed to pray there. This time, there was no mention of Jews, of "people of all faiths" or "tranquil worshippers of all religions."
After we took a step forward with the deal of the century when it came to Jews' unrealized rights on the Mount, the new document from the US, Israel, and the UAE takes us two steps back. The document puts us back at the "Kerry understandings" of October 2015. Then, for the first time since 1967, in understandings then-US Secretary of State John Kerry reached with Netanyahu and King Abdullah II of Jordan, the Israeli government (under Netanyahu) announced formally and publicly that Jews would not pray on the Temple Mount, and that prayer there was reserved for Muslims only. Until that time, Israel had avoided any official recognition – and certainly not in the form of an international document – of the de facto reality that had existed on the Mount for over five decades: that Jews could visit, but not pray.
Now Israel and the US are once again espousing "the right of Jews to pray on the Mount," and not only has that right not been implemented, it is not even mentioned.
Only a year ago, shortly before the Trump peace plan was announced, Netanyahu was visiting the Ukraine and talked informally with reporters about his commitment to Jews being able to pray in the Temple Mount in the future. Incidentally, thanks to the police and as a result of the "policy of normalization" on the Mount that former Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan spearheaded, every once in a while Jews are allowed to hold "non-provocative" prayer on the Temple Mount, if they don't call attention to it (by wearing a tallit, tefillin, or holding prayer books) and keep a "safe distance" from the Muslims.
We must hope that the announcement of normalization with the Emirates, which unlike the Trump plan skips over the issue of Jews' rights on the Mount – will not eat away at the de facto situation that has existed on the Mount for a few years now, and will not pull the Jews back from the area itself.
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