For the past 10 days, the PLO flag has been hoisted on top of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount without police response. The flag representing PA Arabs’ independence and their dream of one day chasing the Jews out of “Palestine” greets Israelis and tourists who ascend from the Jewish Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem to the Kotel and the Temple Mount.
Jews have also been forbidden from going onto the Temple Mount for the past 10 days too.
דגל אש”ף על כיפת הסלע זה היום העשירי.
והר הבית סגור ליהודים כבר עשרה ימים ועד שיהיה אכפת לנו pic.twitter.com/HK5N5F2iN1— ארנון סגל (@arnonsegal1) May 1, 2022
Responding during Sunday morning’s cabinet meeting to several tweets that condemned government and police inaction in face of the longest-ever duration of a PLO flag on the Temple Mount, Communication Minister Yoaz Hendel (New Hope) said: “I don’t know of a decision of a political echelon that says that non-Israeli flags should be hoisted on the Temple Mount or anywhere else.”
With that, Hendel belittled the seriousness of this violation of the status quo on the Temple Mount and ignored the fact that it’s not the flag of France or the US up there, on the gold dome, but the flag of a terrorist organization sworn to destroy Israel since 1964.
With his not-so-charming sense of humor, Minister Hendel explained that “we don’t fight flags. We fight terrorism, and on the contrary, I don’t want to divert attention to some flag. There are much more serious phenomena of lack of governance and sovereignty, in the Negev, the Galilee, and on the Temple Mount, and those must be addressed.”
השר יועז הנדל על התפרעויות הערבים והנפת דגל פלסטין בהר הבית: "אנחנו לא נלחמים בדגלים – אנחנו נלחמים בטרור"
https://t.co/YhpfVD8AES@bentzi_r pic.twitter.com/FZrBr6pb29— סרוגים (@SrugimNews) May 1, 2022
“Still, such flags should not be there,” Hendel conceded.
In the past, Jewish visitors who dared wave an Israeli flag on the Temple Mount were detained and removed from the holy site for long periods of time – so the government does fight flags after all, it just depends which one.
