Temple Mount Clashes Endanger Bennett Coalition

Temple Mount clashes endanger Bennett coalition

GIL HOFFMAN

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s governing coalition faced new obstacles on Thursday over clashes between police and Palestinians on the Temple Mount that angered the Ra’am (United Arab List) Party.

Two policemen were hurt and 21 Palestinian rioters were arrested, as Jews returned to the Mount following the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday after it was closed to them for two weeks. An estimated 1,000 Jews ascended the Mount on Thursday.

The last time there were clashes on the holy site, Ra’am froze its membership in the coalition and warned that the party would take more drastic steps if the police returned to al-Aqsa Mosque. Now, members of the party’s governing Shura Council want to leave permanently ahead of the spring session of the Knesset that starts on Monday.

“What happened at al-Aqsa this morning is a slap in the face to Ra’am,” Shura Council member Masud Ghnaim, who has been an MK for a decade, told the Arabic Nas Radio. “The time has come to shift from freezing to leaving this coalition that does not respect us. It has become a unilateral relationship and we cannot let it continue this way. We will leave the coalition and come back to the embrace of our people.”

Ghnaim blamed the escalation on Yamina politicians Ayelet Shaked, Nir Orbach and Yomtob Kalfon, who praised opening the Temple Mount to Jews for Independence Day on social media. Kalfon even boasted that he persuaded Bennett to make the decision.

Abbas’s opponents in Ra’am are pressuring the Shura Council to extend the freeze of the party’s membership in the coalition instead of ending it, using Yamina’s Temple Mount behavior as an excuse. The most extreme members of the council want to obligate Abbas to declare that the party is leaving the coalition immediately.

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