Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi) on Wednesday morning sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and all government ministers, threatening to resign from the government should Israel agree to concessions that would change the status quo on the Temple Mount, Srugim reported.
The letter was sent out on the day of Netanyahu’s visit to Germany, where he held a political summit with Chancellor Angela Merkel and US Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss the wave of terrorism and the Intifada in Israel. Ariel wrote in his letter that according to information he had obtained, the parties in Germany intend to discuss changing the status quo on the Temple Mount, under which control of the compound would be handed over to the Waqf, under which Muslims would face no limits on entry while individuals who represent “symbols of sovereignty,” such as government ministers and members of the Israeli Knesset, will not be able to get in.
“A foreign government is interfering in Israeli sovereignty,” Ariel described the American pressures on Netanyahu. “The status quo on the Temple Mount, including the prevention of Jewish prayer and limiting the hours of entry is very bad. It is a disgrace that a Jew was arrested on the Temple Mount for reciting ‘Shema Israel,’ but that status quo is decades old and has not been determined by you. Conversely, the additional concessions above, if they are put in place by you, will mean only one thing: creating a new status quo on the Temple Mount, and to that I cannot agree in any way.”
The letter concludes with Ariel, who is a Cohen-priest, blessing Netanyahu to be strong. “I know you don’t desire to be remembered as the one who relinquished our sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the zenith of the nation’s yearning for two thousand years. I am sure you share that feeling and I am strengthening your hands to stand firm against the pressures.”
So far, none of Netanyahu’s decisions has led to the departure of the Bayit Yehudi party or Ariel’s T’kumah faction from the government, despite the fact that over the past two years of sitting together in the coalition, Netanyahu has freed terrorists from jail, froze settlement construction in Judea and Samaria and reiterated his commitment to the two states solution.