PM: Yielding Temple Mount would be a fatal mistake

At Knesset plenum session marking J'lem Day, Netanyahu says only under Israeli control will there be freedom of religion in the heart of J'lem.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Netanyahu at Jerusalem Day ceremony 370 (photo credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO)
Netanyahu at Jerusalem Day ceremony 370
(photo credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO)
Whoever proposes that giving up the heart of Jerusalem - the Temple Mount - will bring peace, is fatally mistaken, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared on Monday evening.
Addressing the Knesset plenum at a special session held to honor Jerusalem Day, Netanyahu said that taking the Temple Mount out of Israeli hands, would bring decline, and the rise of radical Islam in the region and in the world. 
"Only under Israeli control, will this accessibility... and freedom of religion continue," he said. "The Temple Mount is in our hands and ... it shall remain in our hands," Netanyahu continued.
Conversely, Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On said that the prime minister's comments prove "how disconnected he is from what is happening in the city."
"The real Jerusalem is not Jerusalem of gold, but a city rusty from oppression, occupation, ultra-Orthodoxy, and poverty," she added.