Temple Mount entry restrictions

Temple Mount entry restrictions are restrictions on entering the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, which is a holy place for Muslims, Jews and Christians. While it has formally recognized that the responsibility for the site, an Islamic religious endowment, lies under the management of the Jordanian government through the Waqf in Amman, the Israeli government imposes entry limits to Temple Mount for political and security reasons. In addition, Jewish law imposes restrictions on entering Temple Mount.

For centuries an absolute ban on non-Muslim access to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount existed. The situation was relatively free of tensions as Jews acquiesce in the exercise of Muslim authority over the site.In 1839, following the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman establishment and legislation, non-Muslims were permitted to enter Temple Mount, but in order to do so they had to obtain special permit from the governor Jews who managed to obtain permission to visit the site at that time, such as Moses Montefiore and Baron Rothschild, had themselves carried across the site by Muslims, in order not to violate the rabbinic prohibition against Jews setting foot on the holy ground of the area.

Article 13 of the Mandatory Charter conferred on Britain by the League of Nations explicitly denied its governing body the right to either interfere with the site or the administration of purely Muslim holy places. Jewish requests for access to their holy places during the period of British rule of Palestine were focused on the Western Wall, not on the Temple Mount, which was, in any case, off-limits according to the Jewish prohibition against entering the latter. The struggle between Muslims and Jews was concentrated on the latter's desire to secure regulated access to the wall on the mount's western side. As early as 1920, rabbi Avraham Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook stated that though in other hands, the Temple Mount would eventually come into Jewish possession, a declaration which was interpreted by the mufti Amin al-Husseini as evidence of a political plot to wrest control of the Haram itself. In the ensuing period, the Temple Mount became something of a "state within a state" which the British authorities would not enter even when it became the centre for the Arab Revolt, until the mufti fled the site. The King's Order-in-Council issued by the government authorities of Mandatory Palestine in 1934 regulated the legal situation of the site by confirming the religious status quo regarding sovereignty reigning from Ottoman times.

...
Wikipedia