What will you learn in this lesson?

• When did the Israelis take control of the Temple Mount?
• What did the Jews think about the fact that Israel gained control of the Temple Mount?
• Moshe Dayan's view regarding the Temple Mount

Lesson transcript:

Welcome to lesson 7. In the previous lessons, we've talked about the history of the Temple Mount – or Al Aqsa. If we look at the Bible, the history started with the threshing floor of Aravna and continued with the First and Second Jewish Temples. Then, the place remained abandoned for about 550 years until the Muslims came and started building structures on it, including the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. We talked about the Ottomans and the British Mandate and finally reached the Jordanians. Like mentioned in the last lesson, the Jordanians ruled Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967. On the 5^th of June 1967, the Six-Day War started.

Imagine this. On the 7^th of June, 1967. Israel is fighting the Six Day War. In Jerusalem, the Israeli forces are able to break into the Old City of Jerusalem. At 10 in the morning, Motta Gur, the commander of the Paratrooper Brigade, announced: "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" Finally, after 19 years, the Jewish people could pray in their holiest site and could touch the Western Wall, one of the walls that supported the Temple Mount complex. Now that Temple Mount was in Israeli hands, the Jewish people expected that they will be able to visit the place regularly, pray there, and maybe even establish the Third Temple.

But Moshe Dayan, who was at that time the Israeli Minister of Defense, had other things in mind. He wanted to guarantee peace and public order in Israel and in Jerusalem in particular, so Israel could keep hold of the areas conquered – or freed – during the war. When he visited Temple Mount a few hours after it was captured by the Israeli forces, he saw an Israeli flag on top of the Dome of the Rock. He ordered the people to take the flag off and later wrote in his memory book, "The last thing we want to do in Jerusalem is to hang the Israeli flag on the mosque of Omar and on the Tomb of Jesus." He understood that the Temple Mount could turn out to be a major point of conflict, and that the only way to overcome this conflict is to give the Muslims autonomy and control on the Temple Mount, what the Muslims call Al Aqsa. If we look back at history, we can understand that Dayan decided to do what the British did when they came – stick to the Status Quo from the Ottoman Period, with minor changes.  

So, Moshe Dayan and the Muslim leaders came to the Status Quo understanding on Temple Mount on June 17^th, about seven days after the end of the Six Day War. And it affects our lives until today.

It's important to stress this point – the Status Quo is an understanding and is not an official law. That's why it was flexible over the years. 

In the next lesson, we'll be talking about the main points that were part of the original Status Quo understanding.