Not only Israelis, but also our friends in the region were surprised on Tuesday morning by the ascent of Itamar Ben Gabir to the Temple Mount. Senior officials and security officers in Rabat Ammon, Cairo, Rabat and Abu Dhabi, who are responsible for daily contact with Israel, were struck by embarrassment. Two days have passed for this government, and a bomb has already landed on them. Ben Gvir, in their view, is not a private person as he was, but a member of the Cabinet of Ministers and head of a party in the coalition. If this is the new government’s policy, to show who is the owner here, then they are in for some tough times.
One after the other, these governments responded with restrained condemnation. Egypt even chose its words carefully, and instead of saying it condemned, it expressed sorrow. There will be no second chance, a foreign diplomat well versed in Israeli and Arab affairs explained to me this week. The regimes contained the crisis, as did Hamas, but in today’s state of affairs, they are not the only ones setting a regional agenda. Imagine, he said, that a Palestinian citizen would go out and stab or run over some Israelis. What can the regimes do? The Temple Mount is thundering, he said, you are playing with fire.
From every Arab capital that has relations with Israel, questions were directed to Jerusalem. Where is the Netanyahu government going? It is true that there are strategic relations, and Israel is a regional power, and the Arabs have a lot to lose if they distance themselves from it. But in front of Al-Aqsa they are powerless. If it comes to an end, and they have to choose between Al-Aqsa and relations with Israel, they may make decisions that will harm relations. Not because of the importance of the holy compound, but because of the danger they face from it.
A well-informed person in one of the countries of the region described to me how things look from their side. When Israel tightens its grip on the Temple Mount, the Arab street begins to ferment in protest. Sometimes, depending on what is happening, he does not need Hamas to warm him up, but reacts on his own. To whom do the masses direct their immediate fury? to the regime itself. Israel actually possesses a thunderbolt that could ignite Arab capitals far away from it. Therefore, any event of this kind, such as Ben Gabir’s visit to the Temple Mount this week, is experienced by these regimes as an Israeli attack on their national security.
Two months ago, Israel marked the 28th anniversary of the peace agreement with Jordan. In two months it will be 44 years since the agreement with Egypt. During December, two banquets were held in Tel Aviv: Bahrain’s ambassador to Israel, Khaled Al Jalahama, celebrated the kingdom’s national day with great pomp, and his colleague from the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed Al Haja, celebrated his country’s national day with a large crowd. Ben Gvir came to celebrate with him. Netanyahu too. Netanyahu sent a recorded greeting to the Bahrainis, in which he admitted that he was surprised at how far relations had come in the two years since they were founded. Not only do the Arabs not hide the relationship, they want more.
The same source mentioned the Abrahamic agreements and mentioned that they could be damaged if the Temple Mount catches fire. Then he was dumbfounded: how does this government expect to establish peace with Riyadh, when it is harming Al-Aqsa? After all, the Saudi option will be closed. And we all agree, he said, that you are sovereign on the Temple Mount. Why does it have to be shown again and again?
Pigeons and beautiful birds
In recent days, our Arab friends have been racking their brains trying to understand what Netanyahu was trying to signify with the permit he gave to Laban Gabir to climb the Temple Mount, and who manages whom. Netanyahu is Ben Gvir or vice versa. They fail to get a qualified answer. In this issue, the Netanyahu they knew became an enigma for them.
Appeals that reached Jerusalem in the last two months, since the Likud’s victory in the elections, were answered with messages of reassurance. Don’t worry, promised the prime minister-designate and his people, the status quo will be maintained. The status quo, for those who have forgotten, says that the Al-Aqsa compound is a Muslim sanctuary, and the Western Wall is reserved for Jews. A Jew is allowed to go up to the mountain as a tourist, and is not allowed to hold a religious ceremony there. True, government ministers have gone up to the Temple Mount in the past, but Ben Gabir, in the Arab mind, is not just a minister. He is a representative of a militant current, which sees the Temple Mount as a holy area for Jews. His arrival this week removed the messages of reassurance in their eyes, and replaced them with question marks. “Yesterday Netanyahu said he was not ready to take a picture with Ben Gabir, now he is giving him the keys,” explained a Jordanian acquaintance who is well versed in the relations between the two countries.
The days are sensitive in the countries of the region also because of the economic situation. In Egypt the situation is particularly precarious. To what extent he is like that will be learned in the latest news that came from Cairo. Yesterday, two banks offered foreign investors an interest rate of 25% per year on their deposits. According to the expected rate of inflation, the banks will still profit from the deal. In November, a kilogram of chicken in Egypt cost 30 pounds. Since then it has climbed to 55. Every junior official in these countries is aware of the connection between the economic situation and the stability of the regime. The possibility that, in addition to this, the religious fuse is lit, adds weight to the anxieties of the rulers. The fuse is kept in Israel’s hands, and therefore they expect it to calm down and not provoke a flare-up.
Zvi Vogel, a member of Knesset in Ben Gabir’s party, was interviewed this week on IDF radio and offered a permanent solution to the Palestinian problem. targeted countermeasures. “Every day between 50 and 100 in Jihad and Hamas will return their souls to the Creator,” Fogel said. It is important to show strength, the MK explained, and also expressed support for the elimination of evil-seekers from among Arab society. “They will raise a white flag, accept our conditions for coexistence and there will be peace here for 50 years,” he promised. “This will be the last war, after which we can sit down and raise pigeons and other beautiful birds.”
Abd Albari Attoan, a Palestinian journalist who lives in London, also presented to King Abdullah II an initiative to manage the conflict. You guard Israel’s border, wrote Attoan, their longest border, and they constantly challenge you and don’t even say thank you. If so, it’s time to thin out forces.
On the day that Ben Gabir ascended the Temple Mount, Abd al-Salam al-Majali died in Rabat Ammon. In 1994, at the time of the signing of the peace agreement with Israel, Majali headed the Jordanian negotiating team. He passed away at the age of 97, revered and loved by many Jordanians, a symbol of a stable period that was and is not. He was a patriot, recalled his Israeli friend, Eliakim Rubinstein, and added that the mutual respect that prevailed between them contributed greatly to the achievement of the agreement. “Peace is like a plant,” said the retired Chief Justice, “it is not enough to plant it. You also have to nurture it afterwards.”
Although these days are not days of war, they are certainly not days of peace. An Egyptian official told his Israeli counterpart this week that the Israeli government is playing with fire if it intends to allow Ben Gabir to ascend to the Temple Mount permanently from now on. “The tensions from the Gaza Strip have a solution. Hamas can be dealt with,” he noted. “With al-Aqsa, in a situation where the authority is weak and the tension is so high, no one knows what solution to propose.”
The writer is the commentator on Arab affairs of Gali IDF