Three news items of the past week serve as reminders that the security and sovereignty situations in Jerusalem require urgent government action.
The first is the passing of the heroic Jerusalem archaeologist Gabi Barkay, who led protests against Wakf's destruction of Temple Mount antiquities and founded the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which for the past 20 years has sought to recover and research the ruined, residual antiquities, with important results. Barkay played a major role in pushing back against Palestinian ideological violence in Jerusalem and in reclaiming Jewish historical rights.
The second is the notable change in police policy on the Temple Mount, allowing Jewish/Israeli visitors to bring pages with prayer texts onto the Mount. This is one more blessed step forward toward full-scale and regular Jewish prayer at the site – the holiest place on Earth according to Jewish tradition – with all necessary accoutrements (Torah scrolls, prayer books, tallit and tefillin, and more) in a permanent location.
Aside from being essential from a religious perspective, this is long overdue pushback against the Islamic denialism of Jewish history in Zion and the Palestinian attempt to turn the Temple Mount into ground zero for warfare against Israel.
Third is the razing of the large UNRWA compound in Maalot Dafna (Sheikh Jarrah) in Jerusalem, the necessary and uber-justified result of new laws passed in the Knesset outlawing UNRWA operations in Israel.
This, too, is a long-overdue pushback against the Palestinian refugee-martyrdom narrative, perpetuated by UNRWA’s support for the so-called Palestinian “right of return,” and it is punishment for the involvement of UNRWA personnel and administrators in Hamas operations against Israel in Gaza.
Increasingly brazen
A next step in the re-securing (Dare I say re-liberation?) of Jerusalem must include action to counter the subversion of Israeli sovereignty by radical Islamic groups (funded mainly by Turkey and Qatar) and by European nations and NGOs.
According to David Koren of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research (JIPR), foreign troublemakers are becoming increasingly brazen and omnipresent. They engage in covert and overt legal and illegal activities – both ideological and concrete – in the civilian and security spheres. They have little interest in improving the lives of Jerusalemite Arabs but rather seek to undermine the Israeli administration of the city. And some of the bad actors pump out messaging supportive of terrorism against Israel and Jews.
Another critical area requiring government action is wildcat Arab building in the Jerusalem area.
Palestinians have grabbed over 2,600 dunam (2,600,000 sq.m) of land and built over 30,000 illegal structures in and around Jerusalem. Over the past decade, 1,500 unauthorized buildings have gone up in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Shuafat and Kafr Akab alone, with some of them 15-20 stories tall, built without heeding engineering standards. (God help residents of these buildings if an earthquake hits Jerusalem.)
Illegal infiltrations
Most of all, Israel must boost the manpower, resources, and authority of the Jerusalem Police Force, the Border Police, and IDF units arrayed around Jerusalem, to prevent infiltration of terrorists.
Everybody knows that the “security fence” around Jerusalem is a joke.
Aside from the tens of thousands of Palestinians who enter Jerusalem legally every day through 16 supervised gates, there are also thousands of other Palestinians who infiltrate Israel illegally over and through the unfinished fence every month.
Most come to work in Jerusalem, but more than a few penetrate Israel for purposes of terrorism, like the terrorists who breached the fence in northern Jerusalem and carried out the terrorist attack at Ramot junction last September, killing six people.
The IDF reports that some 16,000 Palestinians attempted to infiltrate into Israel from the West Bank in 2025, half of whom were apprehended – and mostly in the Jerusalem area. But since the IDF is not responsible for the barrier in the Jerusalem area (but rather the Israel Police and the paramilitary Border Police), the actual number of infiltrations is believed to be at least double the IDF estimation.
Obviously, this is an ongoing massive security risk that must be addressed, especially as Ramadan is approaching one month from now.
It may be a holy time in the Muslim calendar, meant as a month of fasting, charity, prayer, contrition, and reflection, but it has often been celebrated by Muslim – and especially Palestinian – violence, especially in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. Ramadan is thus exploited as an excuse for a ramped-up holy war against Israel.
When Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur 1973, it was during the month of Ramadan. In many Arab circles, it is still called the “Ramadan War.”
Somehow, the prayer, contrition, and reflection did not inhibit that sneak attack that slaughtered 2,700 Israelis. Neither did the fasting. Egyptian and Syrian soldiers were given an exemption from fasting because they were engaged in the religious duty of killing “infidels.”
Hamas gleefully labeled the murderous attack in 2016 on the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv the “Ramadan Operation.” The beginning of Israel’s “Guardian of the Walls” offensive in 2021 against Hamas in Gaza was marked by barrages of Palestinian rockets fired toward Jerusalem, with 4,400 rockets fired into Israel over that 12-Day War. That was also Ramadan.
Again this year, everybody fears “escalation” in Ramadan, especially since Hamas and its mouthpiece, the Al Jazeera broadcasting network, are religiously calling for expansion of the “Al Aqsa Flood” (Hamas’ October 7 attack) to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria via terrorism and uprising.
Some subsequently call upon Israeli leaders to pay deference to Ramadan, to be extra cautious during Ramadan, to do nothing to “provoke” Muslims during Ramadan – especially in and around Jerusalem’s Temple Mount – because Muslim emotions are oh-so-very sensitive throughout this month.
The soft bigotry of low expectations
When so-called security experts, politicians, diplomats, and statesmen nod their heads and say, “Well, of course, tensions always run high during Ramadan, and as such Jews and Israelis should keep a low profile because Muslim violence must be anticipated during the holy month” – they insult the majority of the world’s Muslims, as well as our intelligence. It is the very definition of surrendering to bullies rather than confronting them.
Instead, Israel’s security, intelligence, and diplomatic experts should be gathering to secure Jerusalem over Ramadan and beyond.
This means imposing anti-riot limits on Arab visitors to Jerusalem and the two Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount – as has been the case over the past three years. This requires multiple concentric circles of police and army checkpoints in a broad area in and around the city.
Only men over 45 years old and married with families, as well as women and children, should be allowed to visit. This keeps away the population most likely to riot or commit acts of terrorism.
Furthermore, any Muslim preacher on the Temple Mount or in the city who incites to violence – say, by cursing the “Zionists” for “Judaizing” Jerusalem and “storming” its Muslim holy sites – should be swiftly jailed.
Alas, such wretched talk has become almost standard Palestinian discourse.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to stoke a broad-scale campaign against the authenticity of Israel’s historic rights in Jerusalem. In 2015, he screeched, “Al-Aqsa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate these holy sites with their filthy feet.”
Additionally, Israel Police must act decisively to bar the flying of ISIS, Hamas, Islamic Movement, and Turkish flags on the Temple Mount, as well as banners with messages calling for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people. (This behavior has become almost expected during Ramadan.)
On the diplomatic level, Israel must be ready to rebuff despicable denunciations by gullible (and not-so-gullible) Western progressives, who, when there is trouble in Jerusalem, love to blabber about Israel’s supposed – though not real – “unprovoked and unacceptable” actions on the Temple Mount, and the use of “excessive Israeli force” – again, not real – “violations of the status quo,” and other such balderdash.
The writer is managing senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy. The views expressed here are his own. His diplomatic, defense, political, and Jewish world columns over the past 30 years are at davidmweinberg.com.