Pictured Above: Member of Knesset Yehuda Glick. Credit: Amitay Salomon via Wikimedia Commons.

(JNS.org) Member of Knesset Yehuda Glick (Likud), a well-known advocate of Jewish access to the Temple Mount, petitioned Israel’s High Court last week in an effort to force the Israeli government to allow lawmakers to ascend Judaism’s holiest site before the Passover holiday.

Glick’s petition asks Israel’s attorney general to limit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authority to intervene on operational police decisions, and comes in response to the implementation of an 18-month ban on Knesset members visiting the Temple Mount.

Glick petitioned the High Court a day after reports that Netanyahu agreed to lift the ban three months from now, following the Jewish and Muslim holiday seasons.

“The situation is insufferable and very strange, where all the people of the world can go in [to the Temple Mount] except for Knesset members,” Glick stated in his petition.

The visitation ban was originally implemented in response to an increase in Palestinian terror attacks in 2015. Palestinian leaders claimed the violence was agitated by Jewish calls to ascend the sensitive holy site, which is also home to the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site. 

The status quo on the Temple Mount, which Glick also seeks to challenge, currently forbids Jews and non-Muslims from praying at the site. The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf administers the strict regulations on prayer at the Temple Mount.

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