Orthodox and secular Israeli parties mulling alliance to bar Jews from the Temple Mount- report

Coalition and Opposition parties reportedly considering temporary alliance to push bill banning Jews from the Temple Mount, after government minister visited the holy site.

By World Israel News Staff

Israeli lawmakers from the Coalition and the Opposition are considering an unlikely alliance, aimed at banning Jews from visiting the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount, according to a report Tuesday.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported following National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s (Otzma Yehudit) visit to the Temple Mount during the Tisha B’Av fast day Tuesday – marking the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish temple – that the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party Shas, a faction in the Coalition, and the center-left, secularist Yesh Atid party in the Opposition are in talks to pass legislation which would prohibit Jews from ascending the holy site.

Opposition Leader MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) has reportedly spoken with MK Aryeh Deri, chairman of the Shas party, to discuss the possibility of a temporary alliance between the two parties.

The conversation, which marks the first time the two have spoken in a decade, centered around a bill drafted by Yesh Atid, which the party is considering bringing up for a vote in the next session of the Knesset.

Ben-Gvir responded to the report, tweeting: “It appears that there is another instance of cooperation between Deri and Lapid: Reaffirming the Oslo Accords.”

Deri, who headed the Shas party in the 1990s, faced criticism from right-wing leaders when his faction backed then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s left-wing government, which signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, leading to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.

MK Gideon Sa’ar (New Hope), a member of the Opposition, mocked the apparent alliance, tweeting a video of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the late spiritual leader of the Shas party, condemning the 2005 Gaza Disengagement plan and calling on lawmakers to vote against it.

“I love the new Yesh Atid party which is adopting Torah views and following in the footsteps of the sage [Rabbi Ovadia Yosef].”

Orthodox Jewish rabbinic authorities are sharply divided over the permissibility of Jewish visitation of the Temple Mount, with some prominent decisors declaring the area off limits to Jews, due to the sanctity of the area and the belief by some that the precise location of the Holy of Holies – off limits for the ritually impure – remains unclear.